STUDIES 

IN 

THE  HISTORY 

OF 

THARRAWADDY 


n 


Eh.A^. 


'iX-^H^CfS^^"- 


7 


H^.O 


M^f-^^ 


STes 

,  Kurecon 


CAMBRIDGE 
'ED  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
I  9^^  20 


of  t|)e 

Onitjergjtp  of  Bottft  Carolina 


The  Author 


les  v\r^ 


4\A^  ^i-^A^ry 


6P  4Uarr^U):^cUv 


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2yJMn'55i^ 


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[y. 


BURMA  STUDIES  AND  PAMPHLETS. 


STUDIES  IN  THE  HISTORY 
OF  THARRAWADDY 

REPRINTED  FROM  THE  RANGOON  TIMES 


PRINTED  FOR  PRIVATE  CIRCULATION  ONLY 


STUDIES 

IN 

THE  HISTORY 

OF 

THARRAWADDY 


CAMBRIDGE 

PRINTED  AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1920 


THARRAWADDY 

Next  month  His  Honour  the  Lieutenant-Governor  will,  it  is 
expected,  pay  a  visit  to  Tharrawaddy  on  his  way  to  Rangoon.^,,.^- 
That  District  has  been  troubled  with  an  unenviable  notoriety  jfr^o^"*'^^^^ 
for  several  years,  and  its  condition  has  been  the  cause  of  many 
communications,  culminating  in  a  reference  in  the  Legislative 
Council.  In  a  sense,  Tharrawaddy  may  be  considered  "an  acid 
test"  subject;  those  who  know  anything  about  it  are  either 
vehemently  in  favour  of  continuous  repressive  measures  or  are 
equally  vehement  in  the  belief  that  repressive  measures  are 
found  to  fail.  As  usual  the  truth  lies  between  the  two  extremes. 
To-day  we  pubHsh  in  another  column  the  first  of  a  series  of 
"  Studies  in  the  History  of  Tharrawaddy,"  written  with  know- 
ledge of  the  District  and  with  a  constructive  purpose.  Some 
of  these  articles  will  of  necessity  set  forth  the  past  history  of 
Tharrawaddy,  as  the  present  is  ever  the  child  of  the  past, 
especially  in  Burma ;  but  they  will  be  found  to  have  very  close 
bearing  on  present  conditions  and  will  provide  material  for  a 
judgment  as  to  the  future.  They  are  intended  to  be  not  con- 
troversial, but  informative;  and  we  anticipate  that  they  will  be 
read  with  interest  by  all  who  have  any  concern  for  the  future 
of  a  District  which  has  been  too  much  in  the  limelight  for 
decades  past.  Tharrawaddy  would  certainly  have  been  happier 
if  it  had  had  less  "history." 

12  June,  1919. 


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Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2010  witii  funding  from 

University  of  Nortii  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


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STUDIES  IN  THE  HISTORY 
OF  THARRAWADDY 

I.    A  BURMESE  REGIMENT 

THE  PEGU  LIGHT  INFANTRY 

The  enrolment  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  Regiment  was  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Governor-General  in  Council  on  the  4th  April, 
1853,  because  the  work  to  be  done  in  the  Tharrawaddy  District 
in  suppressing  the  "rebel"  Gaung  Gyi  required  troops  who 
were  acquainted  with,  and  accustomed  to,  the  local  physical 
conditions  as  well  as  more  accustomed  to  the  climatic  conditions 
than  the  Madras  and  Bengal  regiments  then  employed  by  the 
British  authorities.  The  Corps  was  not  placed  under  the  General 
Commanding  in  the  Province  but  under  the  Civil  Commissioner. 
Enlistment  in  it  was  to  be  for  general  service ;  and  it  was  proposed 
that  the  regiment  should  consist  of  Burmese,  Arakanese, 
Takings  and  Karens,  with  a  few  Malays,  say  twenty  to  each 
company.  The  Malays  were  added  because  Malays  had  been 
found  so  useful  in  the  Ceylon  Rifles,  and  because  it  was  believed 
that  Malays  were  more  feared  by  Burmans  than  any  other  race, 
and  would  therefore  be  useful  against  Burmese  marauders  from 
over  the  border.  Major  Nuthall,  who  was  in  command  of  the 
Arakan  Battalion  at  the  time,  was  appointed  to  raise  the  new 
regiment  and  take  command  of  it. 

In  May,  1853,  Nuthall  formulated  for  the  organisation  of  the 
corps  definite  proposals  which  obtained  the  approval  of  Govern- 
ment. According  to  these  the  corps  was  to  consist  of  800 
sepoys  (with  officers,  doctors,  clerks  in  proportion)  and  was  to 
be  formed  for  civil  purposes  but  to  be  subject  to  all  the  Articles 
of  War  applicable  to  native  troops  in  the  service  of  the  East 
India  Company,  and  liable  for  military  service  whenever  it 
might  be  ordered,  by  land  or  by  sea;  the  standing  orders  of  the 
Bengal  Army  were  to  apply  generally;  the  men  were  to  be 


[     2     ] 

enlisted  as  sappers  and  rowers,  and  to  be  armed  with  percussion 
fusils.  The  uniform  was  to  be  green  with  black  facings  and 
accoutrements  and  silver  mountings,  the  waist  belt  being 
fastened  in  the  front  with  a  bronze  snake-clasp;  in  place  of 
breast-plates  each  man  was  to  have  a  bronze  lion's  head  and 
pricker  in  a  case  connected  with  a  double  chain.  The  pay  of  a 
sepoy  up  to  twenty  years'  service  was  fixed  at  seven  rupees  a 
month. 

At  the  end  of  May,  1853,  Nuthall,  having  obtained  no  recruits 
in  Rangoon — some  critics  said  he  did  not  try  very  hard — went 
to  Prome  and  there  called  for  recruits  under  22  years  of  age  of 
any  race  living  in  the  Province  of  Pegu;  but  the  lack  of  any 
nucleus  caused  difficulty.  After  some  time  20  boys  were  per- 
suaded to  offer  themselves ;  of  these  seven  were  not  physically 
fit  and  seven  declined  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  so  then 
there  were  six.  Nuthall  decided  to  take  this  somewhat  minute 
nucleus  of  a  regiment  to  Rangoon  hoping  for  more  success  there ; 
but  one  deserted  when  embarking  at  Prome,  so  then  there  were 
five.  This  was  hardly  encouraging,  but  Nuthall  persevered. 
Finding  that  part  of  the  difficulty  lay  in  the  system  of  monthly 
payments  he  paid  the  men  every  four  days;  further,  recruits 
were  paid  four  annas  a  day  for  the  broken  period  of  their  first 
month  instead  of  the  regulation  two  annas.  Eighty  men  now 
offered  themselves  for  service  in  a  few  days.  Many  of  them  were 
unfit  for  service,  but  as  they  made  a  show  of  a  nucleus  it  was 
pretended  that  all  were  taken,  although  none  were  actually  en- 
rolled; they  were  useful  for  constructing  barracks  and  it  was 
proposed  to  weed  them  out  afterwards.  They  went  on  strike  for 
Rs.  10  a  month  almost  at  once.  Nuthall  made  a  great  speech  to 
the  strikers  and  drew  their  attention  to  the  Indian  troops  all 
round  them,  arguing  that  they  would  not  have  agreed  to  serve 
so  far  from  their  homes  unless  they  had  found  it  satisfactory  to 
serve  under  the  British  for  Rs.  7-8  a  month  and  the  glory.  The 
recruits  were  not  convinced ;  they  refused  to  work  for  the  pay 
fixed  for  them  and  were  accordingly  dismissed;  but  in  a  few 
days  all  returned  and  asked  to  be  re-enlisted.  Nuthall,  seizing 
his  opportunity,  weeded  them  out  and  took  back  only  those 
who  suited  him;  thus  achieving  a  second  object  by  making  a 
favour  of  the  re-enlistment.    In  July,  1853,  however,  Nuthall 


[    3    ] 

himself  pointed  out  to  Sir  Arthur  Phayre,  the  Commissioner, 
that  the  recruits  had  a  real  grievance.  Coolies  in  India  were 
paid  Rs.  5-8  per  mensem  and  the  sepoys  who  had  to  keep  up 
various  articles  of  half-mountings  were  accordingly  paid  Rs.  7-8 
there ;  in  Burma  where  the  usually  cooly  rate  was  Rs.  8  the  men 
of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry,  who  after  a  rupee  had  been  deducted 
for  equipment  received  only  Rs.  7,  were  distinctly  worse  off. 
Government  however  declined  to  grant  any  concession. 

When  he  first  began  Nuthall  asked  to  be  allowed  to  take  ten 
men  from  his  former  command,  the  Arakan  Battalion,  to  form 
a  nucleus  for  the  new  regiment.  Later  he  found  the  Peguers, 
as  he  called  them,  more  difficult  to  discipline  than  he  had  ex- 
pected; and  he  increased  his  demand  to  40  or  50.  It  is  not  clear 
whether  he  ever  got  these  men,  but  that  he  eventually  did  seems 
probable  from  the  fact  that  he  ceased  to  ask  for  them ;  he  was 
not  the  man  to  subside  without  getting  what  he  wanted.  In 
July  1853  he  reported  that  he  had  172  men  who  had  taken  the 
oath  of  allegiance,  promising  to  serve  for  three  years,  and  to 
work  as  sappers,  pioneers,  builders,  rowers,  etc.,  whenever 
required  to  do  so.  By  September  over  1000  had  offered  them- 
selves and  192  had  been  taken,  while  many  more  were  said  to 
be  ready  to  enlist  if  some  advances  were  sent  to  them.  All  the 
local  recruits  up  to  this  time  were  Karens  and  Shans,  no  Bur- 
mans  or  Takings  being  taken  as  yet.  They  behaved  well  and 
submitted  to  discipline,  and  they  appear  to  have  been  employed 
in  building  barracks  in  Rangoon.  At  first  spades  and  pickaxes 
were  provided  for  sapper  work,  but  these  were  soon  changed 
to  the  more  familiar  dahs  and  mamutis. 

On  the  20th  November,  1853,  the  corps  found  its  first  em- 
ployment on  active  service  when  a  detachment  landed  some 
way  up  the  Pegu  River  and  hunted  a  party  of  dacoits  for  several 
days  under  peculiarly  trying  conditions.  Success  was  only 
partial  but  the  force  earned  the  warm  commendation  of  Major 
Nuthall.  Soon  after  this  the  corps  was  warned  to  be  ready  to 
proceed  to  Yegin  to  quieten  the  Tharrawaddy  District,  and  in 
January  1854  the  move  was  made. 

In  April  1854  a  proposal  to  increase  the  pay  of  privates  in 
quarters  to  Rs.  9  was  sanctioned,  although  it  had  been  rejected 
only  in  the  preceding  January ;  and  in  August  of  the  same  year 


[    4    ] 

the  pay  of  privates  in  quarters  was  raised  to  Rs.  lo  (including 
hatta)  and  the  pay  of  non-commissioned  officers  was  increased 
at  the  same  time.  While  engaged  this  year  in  the  active  pursuit 
of  Gaung  Gyi,  for  which  the  force  had  been  organised,  the  men 
were  frequently  commended  for  good  work ;  they  showed  them- 
selves ready  to  suffer  without  complaint  continued  hardship 
and  privation,  and  exhibited  great  courage  and  daring  in  actual 
conflicts. 

In  1855  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  Karen  and  Shan 
recruits  the  Commissioner  sanctioned  the  enlistment  of  Bur- 
mans  and  Talaings.  No  avowed  Talaing  ever  enlisted  in  the 
regiment;  but  Burmans  were  recruited,  and  by  1858  the  force 
came  to  be  composed  entirely  of  Burmans  and  Malays,  no  Shans 
or  Karens  being  included  at  any  time  after  that. 

Malay  recruiting  had  been  started  towards  the  end  of  1854,' 
when  a  subaltern  was  sent  to  Penang  as  a  recruiting  officer  with 
a  promise  of  assistance  from  the  authorities  there.  Early  in  1855 
some  seventy  Malays  were  brought  up  in  this  way,  and  later 
thirty-one  more,  followed  again  in  February  1856  by  another 
twenty-one.  These  recruits  soon  received  the  enthusiastic  ap- 
proval of  Major  Nuthall  who  found  that  Malays  did  "  not  require 
the  same  ceaseless  supervision  as  the  Burm'ans  to  keep  them  in 
order ;  they  were  more  trustworthy,  took  more  care  of  their  arms 
and  accoutrements "  and  were,  in  his  opinion,  "the  best  men  for 
an  irregular  corps  in  this  Province."  Nuthall  proposed  to  get  more 
Malays  so  as  to  have  one  half  Malays  and  one  half  local  men ; 
but  Government  limited  their  number  to  200,  or  two  companies, 
and  directed  that  if  the  numbers  of  the  two  companies  could 
not  be  made  up  with  Malays  they  were  to  be  filled  with  Burmans. 
To  aid  in  recruiting  them  it  was  promised  that  every  respectable 
Malay  bringing  50  recruits  to  the  regiment  should  be  admitted 
as  a  commissioned  or  non-commissioned  officer.  At  the  end  of 
1857  the  number  of  Malays  was  154  and  this  was  the  maximum 
reached ;  for,  as  it  had  been  found  increasingly  difficult  to  obtain 
Malay  recruits  and  the  expense  incurred  had  been  large — 
Rs.  64  per  recruit  apart  from  pay  between  recruiting  and  arrival 
in  Tharrawaddy — the  recruiting  party  in  the  Straits  Settlements 
was  withdrawn  in  July,  1857.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  quarrels 
were  frequent  between  the  Malays  and  the  local  recruits,  and 


[   5   ] 

peace  between  them  was  maintained  only  by  Nuthall's  firm 
unwavering  justice. 

The  Burmans  did  not  please  Nuthall  so  much  as  the  Malays. 
He  found  them  very  good  on  active  service  but  slack  in  Canton- 
ments; and  in  August  1855  he  said  he  had  been  extremely 
disappointed  in  them  since  they  were  withdrawn  from  active 
service  in  the  field.  As  might  be  expected  the  Burman  failed 
to  appreciate  sentry  duty  or  any  of  the  meticulous  routine  of 
barrack  life,  and  the  records  include  frequent  complaints  by 
the  officers  in  these  directions.  But  one  sentry  at  least  was 
faithful.  Set  to  watch  a  consignment  of  barrels  of  gun-powder 
which  had  arrived  at  Yegin  to  replenish  the  store  of  the  corps 
he  stayed  at  his  post  with  a  fidelity  worthy  of  Casabianca,  sitting 
quietly  there  till  a  spark  falling  from  his  cheroot  caused  him  to 
be  removed  from  the  exploding  barrel  by  jorce  majeure.  The 
story  certainly  agrees  with  the  character  of  the  present  genera- 
tion in  Tharrawaddy  District,  from  the  area  of  which  most  of 
the  Burmans  of  the  force  were  drawn.  Nuthall  thought  the 
reason  for  this  area  supplying  so  many  recruits  was  to  be  found 
in  "the  confidence  and  courage  acquired  by  the  people  of  that 
district  in  predatory  habits  during  the  Burmese  time  and  their 
consequent  predilection  for  a  military  life."  In  April  1855  the 
corps  had  450  privates,  including  Shans,  Karens,  Burmans  and 
Malays.  In  April  1858  it  included  about  780  Burmans  who, 
together  with  the  Malays,  then  brought  the  Battalion  up  to  its 
full  complement  of  sixteen  native  commissioned  and  ninety-six 
native  non-commissioned  officers  with  sixteen  buglers  and 
800  privates.  It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  from  and  after 
1858  no  Karens  or  Shans  were  included. 

On  first  arrival  in  the  Tharrawaddy  district  in  1854  the  corps 
went  to  Yegin,  but  Myanaung  was  chosen  almost  at  once  for 
their  headquarters,  and  they  crossed  over  and  built  their 
barracks  there,  and  retained  that  post  as  headquarters  till  the 
end. 

The  suppression  of  Gaung  Gyi,  which  was  a  great  part  of 
the  purpose  of  the  force,  was  effected  by  about  February  1855, 
when  the  regiment  had  reached  only  half  its  full  complement ; 
but  that  half  in  conjunction  with  the  Arakan  Battalion  played 
no  inconsiderable  part  in  the  operations  and  even  in  March 


[   6    ] 

i854>  when  it  had  been  only  two  months  in  the  field,  the 
corps  was  complimented  by  the  Commissioner  for  gallantry  in 
the  operations  round  Tapun.  Detachments  from  it  replaced 
the  Arakan  Battalion  in  garrisoning  the  disturbed  area  until  the 
Sarawah  Police  Corps,  formed  in  1854,  took  over  some  of  the 
posts,  leaving  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  the  duty  of  assisting  in 
guarding  the  Upper  Burma  frontier  and  of  supplying  garrisons 
for  Henzada,  Mingyi  and  Myanaung.  Detachments  were  also 
employed  in  Hanthawaddy.  In  1857-8,  owing  to  the  great 
amount  of  sickness  amongst  the  detachments  of  the  Madras 
Native  Infantry  employed  on  the  frontier,  all  the  outposts  were 
garrisoned  by  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  who  were  more  suited 
to  this  work  than  were  Indian  regiments  of  the  line.  Their 
experience  in  this  work  was  not  altogether  unchequered.  In 
the  year  1858-9  there  were  two  cases  of  treasure  in  charge  of 
detachments  being  lost,  and  one  instance  of  a  small  party  on 
the  march  losing  their  arms  by  sheer  carelessness;  and  in  i860 
the  pay  of  a  whole  detachment  and  several  muskets  were 
carried  off  by  bandits  from  the  outpost  of  Yaymiet.  On  another 
occasion  a  well-organised  attack  by  the  well-known  plunderer, 
Maung  Hnaung,  a  dismissed  Myook,  resulted  in  the  loss  of 
treasure  and  the  elephant  on  which  it  was  carried;  a  second 
detachment  under  Lieut.  Macdonald  gave  pursuit  but  Maung 
Hnaung  got  away  with  all  his  booty  except  the  elephant  which 
was  abandoned  in  the  jungle.  But  generally  the  men  behaved 
well  in  their  frequent  tasks  of  repelling  incursions  from  Burmese 
territory,  and  by  their  cheerful  quickness  and  readiness  to 
move  without  tents  or  baggage  showed  that  they  were  thoroughly 
adapted  to  their  work.  Early  in  i860  they  anticipated  an  attack 
by  a  body  of  300  dacoits  upon  the  wealthy  town  of  Shwedaung, 
capturing  thirteen  of  them  and  compelling  the  rest  to  abandon 
all  the  loot  they  had  already  got.  In  1859  there  were  no  less 
than  eighty-two  and  in  the  next  year  fifty-eight  desertions ;  but 
this  was  due  to  keeping  young  soldiers  of  little  experience  un- 
relieved for  too  long  periods  in  small  outposts  in  unhealthy  and 
comparatively  expensive  localities  along  the  frontier,  and  when 
about  a  half  of  these  had  been  recaptured  and  punished  the 
fault  was  rapidly  cured. 

An  incident  which  is  of  particular  interest  just  now  took  place 


[    7    ] 

in  1857,  when  the  whole  regiment  volunteered  for  service  in 
Bengal  against  the  Mutineers,  The  Commissioner  replied  that 
the  regiment  had  no  services  to  offer;  the  acceptance  of  pay 
from  Government  made  their  services  the  property  of  Govern- 
ment ;  if  Government  desired  to  use  those  services  orders  would 
be  issued  accordingly;  till  then  it  would  be  more  becoming  to 
the  regiment  to  perform  properly  the  duties  assigned  to  it.  The 
Governor-General,  however,  when  he  learned  of  the  offer, 
thinking  perhaps  that  snubs  were  not  a  monopoly  of  Com- 
missioners, said  that,  although  its  services  were  not  required, 
he  desired  the  Commissioner  to  thank  the  regiment  for  its  offer. 
The  regiment  did,  in  a  sense,  render  Mutiny  service,  as  it 
withstood  the  numerous  frontier  attacks  which  were  made  when 
the  first  news  of  the  Indian  Mutiny  began  to  reach  the  Burmese 
Court,  and  were  systematically  continued  in  1858  by  large  bands 
of  men  who  were  suffering  from  the  scarcity  of  rice  then  pre- 
vailing in  Upper  Burma. 

In  1 86 1  it  was  suddenly  decided  to  disband  the  regiment  on 
account  of  the  establishment  under  Act  V  of  186 1  of  an  organised 
constabulary  for  the  Province.  To  this  new  force  all  the  officers 
of  the  regiment  were  appointed;  and  many  of  the  men  took 
service  in  it  too,  the  remainder  being  gradually  disbanded. 
By  the  30th  April  1861,  328  privates  were  left;  two  companies 
were  kept  for  a  time  till  the  new  constabulary  could  take  over 
the  guard  of  the  jails  at  Henzada  and  Mingyi,  but  on  the  i8th 
August  1 861  the  regiment  came  to  an  end.  But  it  had  lasted 
long  enough  to  show  those  who  had  eyes  that  the  Burman 
would  make  a  good  soldier  if  sympathetically  handled  and 
granted  sufficient  pay  and  reasonable  conditions  of  service.  The 
old-fashioned  soldier,  who,  destitute  of  imagination,  supposed 
that  only  one  standard  and  type  of  discipline  were  permissible, 
and  that  close  formation  and  highly  polished  buttons  were  the 
ultimate  essentials  of  military  art  and  science,  failed  to  see  this; 
but  there  is  no  doubt  that  a  very  different  opinion  would  have 
been  expressed  by  an  Anzac  or  South  African  officer  accustomed 
to  the  different  ideals  of  to-day's  colonial  army.  In  the  Pegu 
Light  Infantry  the  Burmans  had  no  opportunity  to  show  their 
capacity  for  military  leadership ;  but  that  too  was  shown  by  their 
opponent  in  marked  degree,  and  was  again  exhibited  nearly 


[   8    ] 

thirty  years  later  by  the  rebel  U  Thuriya.  The  recent  discovery 
that  Burmans  can  be  trained  to  be  soldiers  might  have  been 
made  at  any  time  by  anybody  who  had  studied  the  Tharra- 
waddy  record  intelligently,  even  if  he  were  not  aware  of  the 
numerous  wars  and  conquests  of  Burmese  history,  or  thought 
they  bore  no  relation  to  warfare  by  armies  organised  on  western 
lines. 


11.    THE  STORM  OF  GAUNG  GYI 

The  principality  of  Tharrawaddy,  which  was  formed  when  the 
kingdom  of  Prome  was  annexed  to  Toungoo  by  Burin  Naung 
in  1542-3  and  continued  up  to  the  time  of  the  British  occupa- 
tion in  1852,  occupied  practically  the  same  area  as  the  present 
Tharrawaddy  District,  save  that  a  small  strip  along  the  river, 
twenty-five  miles  long  and  eight  to  ten  miles  wide,  forming  the 
division  of  Sarawah,  was  not  included.  It  was  divided  into  two 
counties.  North  and  South,  of  which  the  capitals  were  Monyo 
and  Laukazeya — the  latter  being  adjacent  to  the  Mingyi 
which  became  the  headquarters  of  the  Yegin-Mingyi  Assistant 
Commissioner.  There  was  also  a  further  sub-division  into 
twenty  circles — some  accounts  say  thirty-two — under  thigyis 
and  steersmen  and  four  Royal  Forests  under  Conservators.  The 
Myowun  of  the  whole  principality  lived  at  Monyo.  Between  the 
Myozvun  and  the  Sitkes  of  the  two  counties  there  was  a  division 
of  authority,  the  evil  results  of  which  were  exacerbated  by 
appeals  to  the  Prince  of  Tharrawaddy ;  as  a  result  discontent, 
disunion  and  anarchy  had  often  prevailed.  Accordingly  it  is 
not  a  matter  of  surprise  that  Captain  Josiah  Smith,  the  first 
Deputy  Commissioner  of  the  district,  found  on  his  arrival  four 
armed  parties  struggHng  for  control  and  the  right  of  collecting 
the  revenues.  The  strongest  of  these  parties  was  that  of  Gaung 
Gyi  who  had  formerly  been  the  thugyi  at  Tapun.  He  had  failed 
to  pay  in  his  proper  quota  of  taxes,  and  refused  to  furnish  a 
contingent  to  the  Burmese  army  at  Prome,  which  had  been 
collected  to  withstand  the  British ;  but  the  advance  of  the  latter 
allowed  the  Burman  generals  no  opportunity  of  reducing  him 
to  obedience.  The  Myowun  at  Monyo  in  1852  was  U  Talok,  a 
brother-in-law  of  Gaung  Gyi,  who  was  described  in  1853  as 
"upwards  of  eighty  years  of  age  but  still  full  of  energy  rapacity 
and  perfidy." 

As  early  as  September  1852  the  southern  part  of  Tharra- 
waddy was  openly  in  favour  of  the  British ;  and  when  Maung  Po, 
the    Governor    of   Tharrawaddy  and  Myanaung,    retired    to 


[    lo    ] 

Myanaung  in  October  1852,  nearly  the  whole  river  line  became 
safe ;  but  the  northern  portion  of  Tharrawaddy,  where  Gaung 
Gyi's  influence  was  felt,  gave  rise  to  the  most  difficult  of  all  the 
tasks  experienced  by  the  British  in  their  annexation  of  Lower 
Burma.  U  Talok  was  retained  by  the  British  as  Myook  at 
Monyo,  and  he  promised  Gaung  Gyi  to  obtain  for  him  the  post 
of  Myook  of  Myanaung.  Failing  to  receive  this,  or  impatient  of 
delay,  Gaung  Gyi  marched  on  Monyo  at  the  beginning  of  March 
at  the  head  of  a  number  of  Burmese  police  and  soldiers,  who  had 
been  left  behind  in  the  Burmese  retreat  and  were  ready  now 
for  any  undertaking  which  gave  a  fair  promise  of  plunder. 
Altogether  he  had  1500  men,  of  whom  600  were  armed  with 
muskets.  U  Talok  fled  across  the  Irrawaddy  to  Okpo,  and 
Monyo  was  destroyed.  At  the  first  sign  of  disturbance  Captain 
Smith  summoned  Gaung  Gyi  to  Henzada,  intending  to  give 
him  an  appointment.  But  Gaung  Gyi  went  to  Tapun  instead ; 
and,  receiving  secret  support  from  the  Burmese  Court,  set  up 
his  own  Government  there.  He  confirmed  in  their  appoint- 
ments such  of  the  old  thugyis  as  supported  him,  and  drove  the 
others  away.  He  also  appointed  steersmen  who  robbed  boats  on 
the  river  and  in  the  villages  near  its  bank.  His  brother  Gaung 
Gale,  who  had  formerly  assisted  him  in  his  duties  as  thugyi, 
assisted  in  his  new  enterprise,  chiefly  on  the  river,  and  was  often 
credited  with  being  the  more  able  of  the  two.  Some  degree 
of  organisation  was  established  and  it  would  be  more  correct  to 
regard  Gaung  Gyi  as  the  head  of  an  army  competing  with  the 
British  for  the  possession  of  a  Province  abandoned  by  the  Bur- 
mese Government  than  as  a  rebel  or  outlaw  as  he  is  usually 
described.  In  April  Gaung  Gyi's  main  force  consisted  of  600 
men  at  Yuntalin,  about  twenty  miles  from  Monyo,  with  an 
advance  guard  of  300  stationed  at  a  distance  of  eight  miles  from 
that  town ;  two  other  bodies  of  600  each  were  between  Monyo 
and  Mingyi,  and  still  another  body  of  100  was  reported  to  be 
somewhere  in  the  same  neighbourhood.  All  remained  quiet  till 
the  24th  May  when  Gaung  Gyi  suddenly  crossed  the  Irrawaddy 
and  committed  depredations  in  Kanaung  and  Okpo  on  the 
Henzada  side  and  then  returned  to  plunder  on  the  eastern  bank. 
Destitute  people  crowded  into  Henzada,  driven  from  Sarawah 
and  Tharrawaddy  by  the  loss  of  all  their  property ;  rice  was  sold 


[  II  ] 

at  Rs.  8  a  basket — the  usual  price  being  six  to  ten  annas — and 
even  at  that  price  only  small  quantities  were  available.  Captain 
Smith  asking  for  troops  to  assist  him  reported  "  the  spectacle  of  a 
large  tract  of  country  in  successful  rebellion  against  the  Govern- 
ment "  and  "the  rebels  in  possession  of  the  river."  Even  when 
the  Deputy  Commissioner  himself  convoyed  some  canoes  down 
the  river  Gaung  Gyi's  men  tried,  though  unsuccessfully,  to  cut 
off  the  last  of  them.  In  June  the  materials  collected  for  the  re- 
building of  Monyo  were  burned  by  Gaung  Gyi ;  and  Myat  Tun 
who  had  been  defeated  by  Sir  John  Cheape  and  Captain  Fytche 
at  Danubyu,  joined  him  and  took  charge  of  his  river  operations. 
Meanwhile  in  February  or  March  the  Deputy  Commissioner 
had  asked  for  Yegin  to  be  established  as  a  military  post,  for  a 
gunboat  to  patrol  the  river,  and  for  the  Henzada  side  of  the 
river  to  be  made  into  a  separate  district  so  that  he  could  give 
his  whole  attention  to  the  eastern  side.  All  these  requests  were 
granted  and  the  outcome  of  the  requests  for  troops  and  the 
establishment  of  Yegin  was  the  sanction  given  on  the  4th  April 
to  the  enrolment  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  Regiment  which 
was  the  subject  of  the  first  of  these  studies. 

The  Governor- General,  after  cautioning  the  Commissioner 
against  undertaking  anything  with  inadequate  means  or  in- 
volving risk,  "because  of  the  tendency  in  India  and  in  England 
to  distort  or  magnify  trivial  incidents  in  Pegu  into  serious 
disasters,"  gave  him  a  free  hand  to  deal  with  the  situation,  and 
for  a  time  the  British  had  some  success.  H.M.S.  "Nerbudda" 
cleared  the  Irrawaddy  of  Gaung  Gyi's  friends  and  on  the  31st 
July  Smith  reported  that  the  Sanywe  neighbourhood  was 
quietened  and  that  other  rebels  along  the  river  were  disposed  to 
surrender  themselves.  On  the  29th  August  the  Myook  of 
Tharrawaddy  attacked  Gaung  Gyi  with  success  and  cleared 
the  lower  district  of  rebels.  On  the  other  hand  on  the  4th  August 
U  Talok,  the  Myook  of  Monyo,  had  been  kidnapped  by  Gaung 
Gyi  and  carried  off  to  his  stronghold  at  Taungnyo ;  and  Captain 
Phayre  reported  to  the  Governor-General  on  the  ist  September 
that  the  whole  of  the  east  bank  of  the  Irrawaddy  from  a  few 
miles  above  Tharrawaw  to  Tarokmaw  was  "completely  under 
the  power  of  Gaung  Gyi,"  and  that  the  latter  had  apparently 
determined  to  get  the  people  of  the  west  bank  to  join  him.  But 


[     12     ] 

as  a  result  of  the  success  of  the  British  in  the  south  Gaung  Gyi's 
influence  seemed  to  be  waning;  and  on  the  19th  October  it  was 
learned  that,  fearing  attack,  he  had  sent  his  family  to  the  Pegu 
Yoma  for  safety.  In  January  1854  the  British  were  strengthened 
by  the  arrival  at  Yegin  of  the  first  detachments  of  the  Pegu  Light 
Infantry  and  they  occupied  Gaung  Gyi's  quarters  at  Tapun  in 
the  same  month.  Gaung  Gyi  waited  in  the  jungle  near  by,  hoping 
that  they  would  get  tired  of  Tapun — as  well  they  soon  might — 
and  go  back ;  but  being  disappointed  in  this  he  retreated  to  the 
hills.  A  party  of  the  Arakan  Battalion  under  Lieut.  D'Oyly 
followed  up  and  in  the  same  month  of  January  attacked  him  and 
captured  his  gilt  umbrella,  his  gong,  twenty-five  stand  of  arms, 
and  the  wives  of  many  of  his  officers.  One  of  his  lieutenants  was 
killed  and  his  two  elephants  were  nearly  captured.  Amongst 
the  people  confidence  in  the  British  now  began  to  revive  so 
that  more  information  was  obtainable.  Gaung  Gyi  was  followed 
up  at  once,  no  rest  being  taken  lest  news  of  the  pursuers  should 
reach  him,  and  he  was  completely  surprised  at  Bawbin,  where 
there  is  now  a  Forest  Department  bungalow,  a  few  miles  east 
of  NattaUn;  many  of  his  friends  were  killed  or  captured  but 
Gaung  Gyi  himself  escaped. 

The  unhealthiness  of  the  locality  forbade  further  operations 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  hills.  But  unfortunately  the  main 
forces  were  withdrawn  not  merely  to  the  plains  but  all  the  way 
to  Prome.  Gaung  Gyi  seized  the  opportunity  and  at  once 
neutralised  all  these  successes  by  his  renewed  activity.  In 
January  he  had  released  his  brother-in-law,  U  Talok,  whom  he 
had  abducted  in  the  previous  March;  and  U  Talok,  having 
returned  to  Monyo,  had  been  reappointed  by  the  British  to  his 
Myookship  there.  But  on  the  loth  February  another  party  sent 
by  Gaung  Gyi  again  abducted  him.  There  is  no  doubt  that  these 
abductions  show  that  U  Talok  was  sitting  on  the  fence,  but 
they  also  show  which  seemed  at  the  time  to  be  the  winning  side. 
Meanwhile  all  who  had  helped  the  British  in  any  way  were 
attacked,  and  a  reign  of  terror  was  established  in  the  north  of 
the  district.  A  party  was  sent  to  kill  the  My 00k  appointed  by 
the  British  in  Tapun,  and  that  officer  was  severely  wounded  and 
barely  escaped  with  his  life.  Every  village  round  Tapun  up  to 
within  a  mile  thereof  was  burned,  and  its  population  driven  off, 


[    13    ] 

in  spite  of  the  presence  of  350  men  of  the  British  forces  in  that 
town.  The  British  forces  lost  completely  the  confidence  of  the 
people,  so  that  they  could  no  longer  get  either  information  or 
supplies ;  while  the  terror  of  Gaung  Gyi's  name  was  higher  than 
before,  and  many  of  the  leading  men  of  the  district  who  had 
already  submitted  to  the  British  now  submitted  to  him.  All 
the  interior  of  Tharrawaddy  indeed  lapsed  to  Gaung  Gyi,  and 
on  the  3rd  March,  1854,  it  was  found  that  by  occupying  the 
Ba-in  forest  he  had  cut  the  communications  between  Yegin  and 
Tapun.  On  the  7th  March  a  company  of  the  loth  Bengal 
Infantry  was  attacked  about  six  miles  from  Tapun  and  was  saved 
only  by  the  timely  appearance  of  a  force  marching  down  from 
Paungde. 

But  about  this  time  the  energy  of  the  British  began  to  revive. 
The  Commissioner,  Captain  Phayre,  had  offered  in  February 
a  reward  of  Rs.  2000  for  bringing  in  Gaung  Gyi  alive  "and 
untortured";  in  March  the  Governor-General  increased  the 
reward  ten  times.  Captain  Phayre  on  the  22nd  February  met 
at  Tapun  Major  Nuthall  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  Regiment 
and  Captain  David  Brown,  the  Assistant  Commissioner,  and 
these  three  concocted  a  plan  to  drive  Gaung  Gyi  back  to  the 
hills.  Major  Pott  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  Tharra- 
waddy District;  and  Major  Nuthall's  regiment,  with  boats  to 
use  during  the  rains,  was  placed  at  his  disposal.  In  addition 
he  had  a  gun-boat  at  the  mouth  of  the  Tapun  river,  a  detachment 
of  the  Arakan  Battalion  with  two  guns,  and  five  companies  of 
Sikh,  Bengal,  and  Madras  Native  Infantry.  With  the  revival  of 
British  energy  it  was  found  possible  to  add  to  these  a  force  of 
Burmese  armed  levies  to  act  as  scouts  and  protect  the  flanks 
under  the  command  of  their  own  Bos ;  these  were  armed  with 
muskets  and  recruited  chiefly  from  the  neighbourhood  of 
Paungde  and  were  paid  four  annas  a  day;  including  those 
stationed  at  Sanywe,  Monyo  and  Myodwin  the  cost  of  the  levies 
came  to  Rs.  20,000  per  mensem.  In  May  also  the  Sarawah 
Police  Corps  of  480  men  was  sanctioned,  while  the  Deputy 
Commissioner  and  the  Assistant  Commissioner  were  empowered 
to  carry  into  immediate  execution  sentences  of  death  passed 
upon  persons  convicted  of  participation  in  open  rebellion.  In 
July    Captain    David    Brown    was    appointed    Deputy    Com- 


[    14    ] 

missioner  of  Sarawah  with  headquarters  at  Yegin,  the  Henzada 
side  being  taken  away  to  allow  him  to  concentrate  upon  Gaung 
Gyi.  In  November  it  had  still  to  be  reported  that  as  the  Police 
and  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  were  not  sufficient  to  protect  the 
country  from  Gaung  Gyi,  the  Indian  troops  could  not  yet  be 
withdrawn.  But  by  February  1855  the  Arakan  Battalion  was 
withdrawn  after  being  specially  complimented  for  its  work,  and 
replaced  by  detachments  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry,  which 
had  then  reached  a  strength  of  over  400  men.  By  this  time 
Gaung  Gyi's  power  had  collapsed  owing  to  the  close  pursuit  he 
suifered ;  and  the  problem  of  pacification  had  resolved  itself  into 
that  of  dealing  with  a  number  of  small  dacoit  parties  of  which 
his  was  one.  Steady  progress  was  made,  and  in  June  1855 
Gaung  Gyi  withdrew  to  Upper  Burma. 

In  1858  a  scarcity  of  rice  in  Upper  Burma  led  many  who' 
thought  the  British  fully  occupied  with  the  Indian  Mutiny  to 
make  attacks  upon  the  British  frontier;  but  on  urgent  remon- 
strance the  Burmese  Court  adopted  effectual  preventive 
measures.  Gaung  Gyi,  however,  came  to  the  frontier  to  make 
an  inroad  at  the  head  of  a  considerable  force.  Special  orders 
to  desist  were  sent  to  him  from  the  capital,  and  as  he  refused 
to  obey  he  was  shot  by  the  local  Burmese  authorities. 

A  grandson  of  Gaung  Gyi's  brother,  Gaung  Gale,  came  into 
prominence  in  Tharrawaddy  in  the  disturbances  of  1888 ;  while 
Sir  Herbert  Thirkell- White  relates  in  his  A  Civil  Servant  in 
Burma  that  comparatively  recently  he  met  in  Mandalay  some 
descendants  of  Gaung  Gyi.  The  Province  owes  it  to  Gaung  Gyi 
that  he  showed  by  his  own  achievements  that  Burmans  can 
exhibit  capacity  for  directing  military  operations,  and  also  by 
furnishing  the  ground  for  the  experiment  with  the  Pegu  Light 
Infantry  caused  it  to  be  made  evident  that  Burmans  could  fill 
the  ranks  as  well  as  direct. 


III.  "FAIR  GENERALLY,  SOME  SHOWERS; 
UNSETTLED  LATER" 

In  1819  Alompra's  son  Bodawpaya  died  at  his  capital  Amara- 
pura  and  was  succeeded  by  his  grandson  Bagyidaw,  who  con- 
templated an  invasion  of  England  but  is  known  to  the  British 
chiefly  because  he  was  the  King  of  Burma  at  the  time  of  the 
First  Burmese  War.  The  humiliation  which  he  suffered  at  the 
end  of  that  war  affected  his  reason  so  much  that  a  commission 
of  regency  of  four  persons  was  formed,  including  the  Queen's 
brother  Minthagyi,  "formerly  a  fishmonger,"  and  presided 
over  by  the  King's  brother,  Prince  Tharrawaddy.  But  the 
latter  found  palace  intrigues  so  dangerous  that  he  withdrew  from 
the  capital  and  lived  in  various  places  in  and  near  the  Delta, 
brooding  over  the  troubles  which  had  arisen  from  the  supremacy 
of  the  fishmonger,  to  the  following  of  whose  counsel  instead 
of  Tharrawaddy's  it  was  mainly  due  that  the  Provinces  of 
Arakan  and  Tenasserim  had  been  lost  to  those  "uncivilised 
foreigners"  the  English.  It  is  probable  that  Prince  Tharra- 
waddy's endeavours  first  to  avoid  a  war  with  the  British  and 
afterwards  to  come  to  terms  with  them  were  due  to  the  position 
of  his  own  territory  in  the  direct  line  of  advance  from  Rangoon 
to  Ava.  But  this  would  not  make  the  failure  in  the  war  less 
irritating;  and  when  in  addition  he  found  the  fishmonger  was 
ready  to  go  to  a  dangerous  length  in  his  enmity,  he  retired  to 
his  palace  at  Myodwin  in  the  present  Tharrawaddy  District,  and 
under  cover  of  indulging  in  his  favourite  sport  of  boat-racing 
collected  round  himself  there  a  strong  body-guard,  took  measures 
to  raise  a  large  army  and  secretly  collected  8000  muskets.  In 
1837  when  the  fishmonger  sent  a  party  to  arrest  one  of  the 
retinue  at  Myodwin,  Tharrawaddy  was  so  angered  that  he 
marched  with  his  followers  to  Sagaing  and  thence  to  Moksobo, 
the  home  of  Alompra,  and  raised  the  standard  of  a  successful 
revolt.  On  securing  the  throne  he  took  the  title  of  Kunbaungmin 
and  moved  the  capital  back  from  Ava  to  Amarapura;  his 


[    i6    ] 

Tharrawaddy  principality  played  no  further  part  in  the  events 
of  his  reign. 

The  next  disturbance  of  the  Tharrawaddy  atmosphere  was 
the  storm  of  the  Gaung  Gyi  episode ;  but  the  recovery  from  this 
was  exceedingly  rapid.  Gaung  Gyi  withdrew  across  the  frontier 
in  May  or  June  1855  ;  and  already  in  the  Administration  Report 
of  1857  Sir  Arthur  Phayre  declared  that  "Tharrawaddy  is 
probably  the  best  ordered  District  in  the  Province."  In  1857 
many  attacks  were  made  upon  the  northern  boundary  of 
British  Burma  as  the  result  of  a  frontier  agitation  stimulated  in 
the  Burmese  dominions  by  the  first  news  of  the  Indian  Mutiny, 
and  in  1858  these  were  systematically  continued  by  large  bands 
of  men  who  were  suffering  from  the  scarcity  of  rice  prevailing 
in  the  Burmese  territory;  but  from  1857  to  1859,  although 
so  near  the  frontier  that  special  powers  were  granted  to  the 
Deputy  Commissioner  to  carry  into  execution  at  once  sentence 
of  death  passed  on  any  persons  convicted  of  participation  in 
open  and  armed  insurrection  in  cases  in  which  there  had  been 
loss  of  life,  Tharrawaddy  was  the  paragon  with  "less  crime  in 
proportion  than  any  other  District"  in  British  Burma.  In  i860 
there  were  only  nineteen  cases  of  cattle-theft,  and  in  1861  the 
Tharrawaddy  and  Henzada  Districts  were  united  because  it  was 
"unnecessary  to  retain  a  separate  Deputy  Commissioner  and 
his  staff  for  a  district  producing  so  little  revenue,  litigation  or 
crime  as  Tharrawaddy."  There  was  some  disorder  in  1865-8 
due  to  outlaws  from  Upper  Burma  and  the  Prome  District,  but 
Tharrawaddy  was  generally  law-abiding,  and  in  1873  there  was 
only  one  case  of  dacoity  in  the  whole  of  the  District  (which  then 
included  the  present  Henzada  District).  It  was  recorded  in  that 
year  that  "In  Tharrawaddy,  once  the  most  turbulent  district 
in  Burma,  a  gang  would  find  no  sympathy  amongst  the  people 
and  would  soon  be  disposed  of  by  them."  This  remark  is  of 
interest  not  only  as  characterising  the  people  as  law-abiding  but 
also  as  refuting  the  possible  suggestion  that  the  clear  crime 
calendars  were  due  to  bad  reporting  of  crime.  In  1878  there 
was  an  increase  of  dacoity  and  other  serious  crime ;  but  this  was 
observed  in  all  the  other  Districts  too,  and  active  measures  soon 
disposed  of  the  culprits,  so  that  in  1880-81  Tharrawaddy  again 
showed  a  comparatively  clear  crime  calendar. 


[    17   ] 

But  in  1885  the  district  began  to  get  out  of  hand  and  in  the 
early  part  of  1886  a  storm  of  disorder  which  had  burst  in  the 
Shwegyin  District  in  December  1885  reached  Tharrawaddy 
which  then  became  the  scene  of  quasi-rebellions  that  were 
suppressed  only  with  the  aid  of  troops.  Nga  Aung  who  lived 
within  five  miles  of  the  district  headquarters  raised  a  golden 
umbrella  and  within  a  week  had  a  following  of  several  hundred 
men  with  many  guns  collected  from  the  surrounding  villages. 
Other  risings  of  a  political  character  were  headed  by  Landa 
and  the  Pongyi  Bo.  When  these  were  suppressed  the  rebels 
broke  up  into  small  bands  of  dacoits.  Bad  characters  of  all 
kinds  now  banded  together  and  took  to  the  jungle,  while  less 
daring  spirits  stayed  in  their  villages  and  dacoited  under  cover 
of  the  notorious  gangs.  Villages  with  less  than  five  guns  were 
disarmed  by  the  Government  to  prevent  firearms  falling  into 
the  hands  of  dacoits,  but  the  dense  jungle  of  the  district  made 
capture  of  the  dacoits  difficult.  Informers  were  often  murdered 
and  villagers  therefore  feared  to  give  information.  The  police 
seemed  to  be  frightened  and  even  the  Township  Magistrates 
failed ;  most  dacoities  took  place  close  to  township  headquarters 
and  police  stations.  In  the  third  and  fourth  quarters  of  1886 
there  were  159  and  139  dacoities  respectively.  The  police  were 
not  altogether  useless,  for  they  made  many  arrests  and  in  the 
third  quarter  secured  seventy-six  convictions ;  but  for  the  most 
part  in  this  and  in  the  two  succeeding  years  dacoities  were  the 
work  of  gangs  in  formidable  numbers  under  recognised  leaders, 
and  the  work  of  the  police  was  of  the  nature  of  petty  warfare. 
The  rural  police  failed  at  this  time  because,  as  elsewhere  in 
Lower  Burma,  they  had  lost  touch  with  the  people.  But  the 
regular  official  police  were  strengthened  and  received  the 
assistance  of  a  special  Indian  Police  Force  recruited  from  North- 
ern India,  and  of  a  punitive  police  force  which  was  imposed  at 
the  request  of  the  people,  and  of  "Karen  levies";  and  by  con- 
tinually hunting  the  dacoits  they  had  already  made  large  progress 
in  settling  the  district  quite  early  in  1887.  It  is  important  to 
note  that  the  "Karen  levies,"  who  were  volunteers  enrolled 
as  special  constables  on  the  understanding  that  they  would 
turn  out  to  assist  the  regular  police  when  called  upon,  included 
in  Tharrawaddy  District  quite  a  few  Karens,  and  were  chiefly 


[    i8   ] 

composed  of  Burmans  and  Yabeins.  When  on  active  service 
these  received  pay  and  were  armed  by  Government ;  where  not 
less  than  ten,  or  in  some  cases  five  lived  in  the  same  village, 
they  were  allowed  to  retain  their  guns  whether  on  active  service 
or  not. 

But  about  the  middle  of  the  hot  weather  of  1887,  when  con- 
ditions had  so  much  improved,  the  local  officers  made  the 
mistake  of  issuing  licenses  for  firearms  freely;  and  this  was 
immediately  followed  by  a  recrudescence  of  dacoity  which 
required  special  measures  for  its  suppression.  Punitive  police 
were  not  imposed  after  August  1887  (when  their  number  was 
375)  but  regular  troops  were  stationed  at  all  the  treasuries  to 
set  free  the  police  for  dacoit-hunting.  In  April  1888  Mr  Todd- 
Naylor  became  Deputy- Commissioner;  the  work  of  re-estab- 
lishing order  was  pressed  on  vigorously  and  disarmament  was 
completed.  Truly,  as  the  dacoit  gangs  were  broken  up,  crimes 
of  violence  were  found  only  to  have  given  place  to  crimes  of 
stealth ;  but  those  who  looked  rather  at  the  kind  of  disorder 
most  readily  perceived  were  just  beginning  to  think  the  sky 
was  getting  clear  when,  in  July  1888,  there  broke  out  suddenly 
the  rebellion  of  the  Pongyi^  U  Thuriya,  which  proved  to  be 
the  greatest  storm  of  all  save  only  that  of  Gaung  Gyi. 

U  Thuriya's  rebellion  was  well  organised,  and  the  arrange- 
ments extended  all  along  the  railway  line  from  Paungde  to 
Tharrawaddy.  His  adherents  were  bound  by  an  oath ;  and  many 
of  them  were  tattooed  with  the  letters  ©  ©  Q  O ,  partly  as  a 
distinctive  mark,  partly  to  make  them  invulnerable.  Some 
1700  palm-leaf  tickets  were  prepared  for  distribution  to  the 
rank  and  file,  commissions  on  larger  pieces  of  palm-leaf  were 
given  to  the  leaders,  and  a  grandson  of  Gaung  Gale  (the  brother 
and  assistant  of  the  famous  Gaung  Gyi)  was  nominated  Viceroy 
of  Tharrawaddy  under  the  Myingun  Prince.  Nearly  all  the 
various  dacoit  bands  of  the  district  joined  in  the  undertaking. 
The  2nd  July  was  chosen  by  an  astrologer  as  a  suitable  date, 
and  it  was  arranged  to  make  a  simultaneous  attack  that  night 
on  Gyobingauk,  Zigon,  Nattalin,  Paungde,  and  all  the  railway 
stations  between  Okpo  and  Tharrawaddy. 

For  some  reason  U  Thuriya  changed  the  date  to  the  ist-2nd 

^  PoM^>'z=  Buddhist  monk. 


[    19    ] 

July  midnight,  when  the  telegraph  wires  were  cut  and  the  railway 
workmen  forced  to  pull  up  a  rail  on  the  line  between  Gyo- 
bingauk  and  Zigon.  The  Kyedangyi  of  the  neighbouring  village 
of  Kayingon  was  dragged  out  and  informed  that  the  rule  of  the 
foreigner  was  at  an  end ;  while  a  proclamation  was  read  to  him 
which,  he  was  told,  was  issued  by  the  Myingun  Prince.  Copies 
of  this  proclamation  were  afterwards  obtained  and  it  was  found 
then  to  be  of  a  purely  political  nature  with  no  suggestions  of 
oppression  or  mis-government.  Having  pulled  up  the  rail  the 
rebels  marched  south  to  capture  or  sack  Gyobingauk  and  the 
Rangoon-Prome  mail-train.  There  had  been  a  rumour  that 
Sir  Charles  Crosthwaite,  the  Chief  Commissioner,  would  travel 
by  that  train,  and  it  is  possible  the  date  of  the  rising  was  changed 
on  that  account;  it  was  beheved  that  the  party  which  tore  up 
the  rail  at  Zigon  intended  to  take  up  another  behind  the  train 
so  as  to  ensure  its  capture. 

Meanwhile  Maung  Tha  Pe,  the  Kyedangyi  of  Wunbe  In 
village  near  Zigon,  had  warned  Mr  Hill,  the  PoHce  Officer  at 
Zigon,  of  the  project  at  lo  a.m.  on  the  ist.  Mr  Hill  took  mea- 
sures to  save  the  guns  of  headmen  and  others  in  the  neighbour- 
hood and  of  the  Bawbin  police  out-post  from  falling  into  the 
hands  of  the  rebels,  and  informed  the  Inspector- General  of 
Police  and  the  Deputy  Commissioner,  Mr  Todd-Naylor.  The 
latter  proceeded  to  the  scene  in  a  light  train  which  acted  as 
pilot  to  the  night  mail  and  saved  it  from  wreck,  and  after  an 
exciting  night  and  a  diligent  search  arrested  eighty-four  of  those 
concerned  and  effectively  quashed  the  rising.  This  served  to 
show  that  the  Government  both  could  and  would  suppress 
disorder;  and  the  work  of  the  police  immediately  began  to 
improve  rapidly  in  results,  so  that  by  the  end  of  the  year  the 
detection  of  crime  in  this  district  was  described  as  excellent. 
A  year  after  the  rebellion  the  Chief  Commissioner  declared 
that  the  dacoit  gangs  had  been  extirpated  and  that  the  district 
had  been  brought  to  a  state  of  quiet  which  it  had  not  enjoyed 
for  a  long  time. 

Although  the  sensational  development  of  U  Thuriya's  ad- 
venture was  peculiar  to  Tharrawaddy  the  epidemic  of  ordinary 
crime  was  not ;  and  by  1890  the  district  had  recovered  and  could 
not,  for  instance,  be  compared  with  the  districts  of  Pegu  and 


[     20     ] 

Amherst.  In  1891  in  spite  of  an  increase  from  thirty-eight  to 
forty-nine  violent  crimes  (due  largely  to  a  band  of  dacoits  from 
Hanthawaddy,  of  which  the  two  leaders  were  both  shot), 
Tharrawaddy  was  by  no  means  the  worst  district  in  the  province, 
and  with  further  steady  improvement  the  violent  crimes  of 
1893-4  f^^^  to  twenty-one  cases.  Neither  did  Tharrawaddy  at 
that  time  merit  special  mention  for  cattle  theft.  But  in  1894-5, 
when  there  was  Only  three-quarters  of  the  usual  harvest  in  the 
northern  part  of  the  district,  and  a  combination  of  millers 
controlled  prices  in  Rangoon,  there  was  a  violent  change  for 
the  worse.  There  were  twenty-eight  murders;  violent  crimes 
increased  from  twenty-one  to  sixty-four,  placing  the  district 
third  in  the  province  in  this  matter;  cognisable  crime  of  all 
kinds  increased  and  numerous  false  cases  were  reported.  In 
1895-6  Tharrawaddy  led  the  province  with  eighty-two  violent 
crimes.  Hanthawaddy  coming  second  with  forty-nine,  but 
there  were  no  dacoities  included,  most  being  petty  highway 
robberies.  In  this  year,  however,  cattle  theft  became  really 
serious  in  the  district  and  from  this  time  onwards  Tharrawaddy 
was  distinctly  a  warm  place.  Though  Hanthawaddy  tended  to 
surpass  it  in  violent  crimes  there  was  little  to  choose  between 
them.  In  1903-4  there  was  a  marked  growth  of  crime  in  Tharra- 
waddy, which  led  to  the  addition  of  iii  men  to  the  regular 
police  of  the  district.  This  was  followed  in  1907  (just  after  the 
general  reform  of  the  police  force)  by  another  severe  storm  of 
crime  which  had  not  yet  subsided  in  191 2,  when  the  regular 
police  force  was  increased  by  117  men  and  a  punitive  police 
force  of  263  men  was  imposed  for  five  years  at  a  cost  of  Rs.  543 ,000, 
which  was  recovered  from  the  local  inhabitants  by  a  ten  per 
cent,  cess  upon  the  land-revenue.  It  must  be  noted  that  after 
the  general  reform  of  the  police  force  in  1906  the  proportion 
of  police  officers  to  population  appears  to  have  been  diminished 
relatively  in  Tharrawaddy.  For  in  1905  this  district  had  one 
police  officer  to  every  876  of  the  population  and  in  19 10  one 
to  every  760 ;  but  the  corresponding  figures  for  Pegu  were  902 
and  482,  and  for  Prome  909  and  666^. 

There  can  be  no  gainsaying  the  bad  record  of  crime  in 

^  All  these  figures  allow  for  the  increase  of  population  since  the  census 
of  looi  and  therefore  differ  from  the  figures  in  the  official  Police  Reports. 


[     21     J 

Tharrawaddy  since  1894.  The  district  has  an  unenviable  reputa- 
tion for  criminality  in  all  branches,  with  murder  and  violent 
crime,  ordinary  theft  and  cattle  theft  as  its  specialities.  The 
general  opinion  is  that  this  has  always  been  the  case,  and  records 
can  be  cited  which  support  this  view.  In  the  Pegu  Commis- 
sioner's letter-book  of  1853  "^^Y  ^^  found  a  report  that  "the 
Sarawah  district  was  always  in  bad  order  in  Burmese  times." 
Of  the  Tharrawaddy  part  of  the  district  it  is  recorded  in  the 
same  book  that  "since  long  before  the  memory  of  man  the 
people  have  been  disorderly  and  rebellious ;  discontent  disunion 
and  anarchy  have  often  prevailed  there."  An  old  proverb  ran: 
"A  Tharrawaddy  man  comes  to  you  with  a  law-book  in  one  hand 
and  a  dah^  in  the  other."  The  Commandant  of  the  Pegu  Light 
Infantry  declared  about  1857  that  the  Tharrawaddy  men  were 
suited  to  a  military  life  as  a  result  of  the  "  confidence  and  courage 
acquired  in  predatory  habits  during  Burmese  times."  In  his 
order  of  1854  for  the  formation  of  separate  Henzada  and  Tharra- 
waddy Districts  Sir  Arthur  Phayre  gave  as  his  reason  for  the 
change  "the  unsettled  state  of  the  township  of  Tharrawaddy 
arising  from  the  disposition  of  its  inhabitants  who  from  time 
immemorial  have  been  noted  as  a  turbulent  and  lawless  race." 
He  had  already  written,  too,  in  1853:  "The  people  used  to 
boast  that  they  made  away  with  their  governors  when  they 
ceased  to  be  pleased  with  them,  and  they  were  a  by-word  of 
the  Burmese."  It  may  be  noted,  however,  that  an  exact  parallel 
of  this  last  has  been  said  of  the  English  before  now,  and  the 
Parliamentary  system  depends  essentially  upon  the  power  to 
displace  undesirable  rulers;  the  proverb,  too,  does  not  suggest 
that  the  Tharrawaddy  man  had  no  respect  for  Law.  Moreover 
in  1857,  when  he  had  been  longer  in  the  province  and  knew  more 
about  it.  Sir  Arthur  Phayre  declared  that  "Tharrawaddy  was 
probably  the  best  ordered  District  in  the  Province."  General 
Fytche  and  the  Hon.  Ashley  Eden  gave  it  good  testimonials, 
too,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  'sixties  and  'seventies,  and  indeed  a 
good  report  was  normal  for  many  years.  This  must  be  reconciled 
with  the  earlier  statements;  and  it  is  observed  at  once,  when 
this  is  attempted,  that  those  statements  were  necessarily  based 
upon  reports  from  Burmans  friendly  to  the  new  rulers.  But 
^  Z)a/j=  knife  or  sword. 


[     22     ] 

while  it  has  never  yet  been  proved  that  those  Burmans  did  not 
colour  their  reports  for  any  purpose,  it  is  not  difficult  to  suppose 
they  would  desire  to  enhance  the  contrast  between  themselves 
and  the  recalcitrants,  or  to  excuse  failures  in  their  administra- 
tion by  a  magnification  of  the  difficulties,  or  to  satisfy  their 
vanity  by  additions  to  their  escort.  Then  there  is  the  psycho- 
logical consideration  that  the  Burman  constantly  describes  a 
condition  which  has  held  for  a  few  years  as  having  held  "  always  " 
or  "for  ever  so  long";  it  is  merely  a  matter  of  an  undeveloped 
memory  and  of  a  lack  of  historical  training.  Moreover  those 
early  reporters  necessarily  obtained  their  information  through 
interpreters  of  poor  attainments ;  it  is  not  likely  that  a  Deputy 
Commissioner,  educated  in  early  Victorian  times  and  harassed 
by  Gaung  Gyi,  would  make  a  critical  enquiry  into  the  exact 
shades  of  meaning  of  the  apparently  simple  word  always.  The 
difficulties  which  could  arise  through  ignorance  of  the  Burmese 
language  are  suggested  by  a  report  which  Captain  Smith  made 
in  1853  ^^  ^he  effect  that  "the  principal  crops"  were  rice, 
miscellaneous  vegetables,  sessamum  indigo  and  ngapi^.  With 
a  people  so  disorderly  as  the  first  reports  declared,  it  would  be 
impossible  that  on  Gaung  Gyi's  withdrawal  order  should  not 
only  be  restored  instantaneously  but  also  maintained.  The 
restoration  could  perhaps  be  explained  by  the  depopulation  of 
the  area  during  the  disorders ;  but  the  same  explanation  cannot 
extend  to  the  succeeding  years  when  the  old  population  rapidly 
flowed  back  again.  It  is  known  that  Gaung  Gyi  was  rebelling 
against  the  Burmese  Government  and  that  no  less  than  four 
armed  parties  were  struggling  for  mastery  in  Tharrawaddy 
before  the  British  appeared  on  the  scene.  Captain  Smith 
declared  in  1853,  before  Gaung  Gyi's  depredations  began,  that 
"nearly  all  the  gang  robberies  of  this  District  originate  in  the 
scarcity  of  food ;  the  people  are  forced  by  absolute  want  to  band 
together  for  the  purpose  of  plundering  villages  and  boats  known 
to  contain  rice  ngapi  and  other  necessaries  of  life."  It  is  most 
probable  that  the  disorder  which  the  friendly  Burmans  reported 
was  really  confined  to  a  comparatively  short  episode,  though 
there  had  been  previous  occasions  of  friction  between  the 

^  Ngapi  means  fish  paste. 


[    23    ] 

Myozvun  and  the  Sitkes  owing  to  the  bad  political  organisation 
which  divided  authority  between  them. 

The  uncritical  repetition  of  the  earliest  reports  of  the  criminal 
character  of  the  Tharrawaddy  District  has  unfortunately  given 
rise  to  a  widespread  belief  that  all  its  energies  and  genius  have 
since  the  time  of  the  pithecanthropus  been  combined  in  and 
concentrated  upon  the  production  of  crime  and  that  good  order 
has  never  been  known  there.  But  examination  of  the  records 
of  the  first  forty  years  of  British  administration  clearly  exposes 
the  falsity  of  this  belief;  and  if  any  real  success  in  reducing  the 
crime  of  Tharrawaddy  is  to  be  made  this  false  view  and  its 
implications  for  the  future  must  be  given  up.  The  true  history 
is  that  apart  from  the  minor  episode  of  1878  to  1880  and  the 
more  serious  episode  of  1885  to  1889,  the  district  was  in  good 
order  throughout  the  British  administration  until  1894;  only 
then  did  it  begin  to  deserve  its  present  reputation  for  crime. 


IV.    METEOROLOGY 

In  studying  the  social  and  political  atmosphere  of  Tharrawaddy, 
it  is  important  to  bear  in  mind  the  dates  of  its  disturbances. 
A  cause  which  has  been  in  constant  action  since  before  1853 
could  readily  explain  a  generally  heavy  crime  record  with 
variations  due  to  the  super-imposition  of  other  forces;  but  it 
will  require  particularly  careful  argument  to  establish  such  a 
cause  for  the  actual  record,  clear  up  to  1894  with  the  exception 
of  the  storms  of  1878  to  1880  and  1885  to  1889.  The  contrast 
between  the  periods  before  and  after  1894  is  even  more  marked 
than  at  first  appears  because  allowance  must  be  made  for  the. 
increasing  energy  of  repression.  A  marked  feature  of  the  modern 
history  of  the  district  is  the  frequency  with  which  punitive 
police  forces  have  been  imposed ;  in  the  late  nineties  they  were 
a  regular  institution  in  most  of  the  townships.  The  increase  of 
crime  in  1906  and  the  repeated  effect  of  an  increased  police 
force  in  diminishing  crime  suggest  nothing  so  much  as  a  spring 
compressed  by  the  police  and  expanding  at  the  slightest  relaxa- 
tion of  their  pressure.  But  just  as  physical  meteorology  dis- 
counts the  effect  of  roofs  and  umbrellas,  so  criminal  meteorology 
must  distinguish  between  retarded  genesis  and  increased  re- 
pression ;  and  it  appears  that  the  virtual  genesis  of  crime  has 
been  accelerated  since  1894  even  more  rapidly  than  the  figures 
for  recorded  crime  indicate.  The  special  conditions  of  1885  to 
1889  will  be  dealt  with  presently;  previous  to  that  the  genesis 
of  crime  was  limited  in  spite  of  the  slightness  of  repression. 
Tharrawaddy  was  described  in  1873  as  a  model  of  good  order; 
in  1 86 1  there  was  so  little  crime  that  it  was  thought  unnecessary 
to  incur  the  expense  of  a  Deputy  Commissioner.  It  has  never 
yet  been  suggested  that  this  reduction  of  the  cadre  of  Deputy 
Commissioners  as  a  result  of  success  in  restoring  good  order 
is  the  reason  for  a  failure  to  continue  or  repeat  that  success; 
but  most  other  considerations  except  sunspots  have  been  put 
forward  at  one  time  or  another.  Many  of  these,  however,  relate 
chiefly  to  the  suppression  of  crime ;  or,  so  far  as  they  relate  to 


[   25    ] 

its  genesis,  apply  equally  to  other  districts  or  other  times  and, 
therefore,  while  they  may  explain  the  heavy  crime  calendar  of 
Lower  Burma  in  general,  fail  to  explain  the  special  facts  of 
Tharrawaddy  history.  The  first  step  towards  understanding 
that  history  is  to  review  the  facts ;  that  has  already  been  done  in 
broad  outline,  and  now  a  closer  view  will  be  taken  of  the  pre- 
vailing conditions  at  each  season  of  disorder. 

Amongst  the  explanations  of  the  disturbed  atmosphere  of 
the  Tharrawaddy  District  in  particular  appears  a  reference  to 
Kunbaungmin's  revolt.  It  is  suggested  that  he  provided  the 
origin  of  a  criminal  population  by  attracting  lawless  characters 
to  his  home  at  Myodwin.  Probably  he  did  include  many  such 
in  his  following,  but  they  would  be  the  least  likely  to  be  left 
behind  when  he  marched  for  the  throne;  with  such  prospects 
of  loot  they  would  naturally  go  with  him  to  claim  their  reward 
from  their  successful  leader.  Again  it  is  suggested  that  Gaung 
Gyi  left  a  legacy  of  criminals ;  but  it  is  difficult  then  to  explain 
the  immediate  and  lasting  return  of  good  order  on  his  with- 
drawal. It  is  reported  in  1855  that  the  more  orderly  population 
had  almost  evacuated  the  district  and  that  it  was  their  immigration 
to  Henzada  which  forced  up  the  price  of  rice  in  that  town  in 
1854  to  sixteen  times  the  normal.  It  was  natural  for  the  officials 
of  the  time,  who  regarded  Gaung  Gyi  as  a  rebel,  to  consider 
his  followers  lawless.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Gaung 
Gyi's  long  appeared  to  be  the  winning  side,  that  his  enterprise 
was  really  an  attempt  to  establish  a  government,  that  those  who 
foresaw  his  final  success  foresaw  also  the  British  retiring  as 
discredited  rival  claimants  for  an  ownerless  province.  It  would 
be  more  correct  to  regard  Gaung  Gyi's  followers  as  the  more 
adventurous  rather  than  the  less  orderly  elements  of  the  popula- 
tion. Moreover,  as  soon  as  it  was  clear  that  life  and  property 
were  safe  in  Tharrawaddy,  the  people  returned  to  their  former 
homes,  and  new  settlers  came  from  elsewhere,  so  that  already 
by  1868  the  Government  of  India  had  admitted  that,  in  spite 
of  the  good  order  maintained,  the  increase  of  population  re- 
quired Tharrawaddy  to  be  separated  again  from  Henzada 
District.  In  1878  when  the  separation  was  carried  out  there  was 
initially  some  administrative  confusion,  owing  to  the  difficulty 
found  in  establishing  a  new  headquarters  and  organising  the 


[    26    ] 

newly- formed  district;  the  construction  and  opening  of  the 
new  railway  had  the  effect  of  increasing  crime;  there  was  a 
general  increase  of  crime  throughout  Lower  Burma ;  and  there 
was  also  a  disturbing  factor  in  the  revenue  demand.  The  system 
of  settlement  of  land-revenue  by  leases  had  proved  very  popular 
in  Tharrawaddy  in  1863-64  when  most  of  the  landowners, 
unlike  those  of  Hanthawaddy,  accepted  the  ten  year  leases 
which  were  offered  them ;  in  1873-74  it  was  decided  not  to  issue 
fresh  leases  and  "certificated  surveyors"  were  sent  out  to 
measure  the  land  for  re-assessment.  In  1880-82  the  careful 
survey  by  a  better  agency  found  the  areas  were  generally  under- 
estimated, but  it  did  not  follow  that  there  was  so  much  under- 
estimation in  1878 ;  it  is  certain  that  it  was  a  rash  proceeding  to 
trust  to  the  kind  of  surveyor  employed,  and  it  is  probable  that 
some  individual  cultivators  felt  through  the  exaggeration  of 
their  area,  or  from  the  expenses  involved  in  avoiding  that,  a 
hardship  which  was  not  softened  by  the  average  under-assess- 
ment.  In  any  case  there  was  a  general  increase  of  revenue  due 
to  the  assessment  of  extensions  made  free  under  the  leases,  and 
there  was  anxiety  about  the  future  which  was  amply  justified 
by  a  summary  enhancement  of  the  rates  per  acre  by  twenty-five 
per  cent,  in  1879  and  an  addition  in  1880  of  an  extra  five  per 
cent,  to  the  five  per  cent,  cess  already  paid. 

The  next  disturbed  period  was  the  serious  one  of  1885  to 
1889  when  there  was  very  patent — and  unfortunately  rather 
obsessing  the  minds  of  many  who  were  thus  prevented  from 
looking  deeper— the  unsettlement  due  to  the  war  in  Upper 
Burma.  Tharrawaddy  was  the  nearest  district  to  Upper  Burma 
which  offered  any  considerable  area  of  new  land  to  cultivators, 
and  it  had  5400  Upper  Burman  immigrants,  considerably  more 
than  any  other  district.  Even  in  London  in  1 9 1 6  children  stopped 
and  looted  vans  of  merchandise  as  a  result  of  the  unsettlement 
of  their  minds  by  war  conditions ;  how  easily  then  might  there 
be  unsettlement  in  Tharrawaddy  when  rumours  of  British 
reverses  began  to  spread?  It  was  alleged  by  some  (but  with 
what  reason  is  not  clear)  that  some  of  these  immigrants  were 
emissaries  sent  from  Upper  Burma  for  the  definite  purpose  of 
causing  disorder.  The  general  population  however  did  not  love 
disorder;  they  asked  for  and  obtained  in  1886  the  imposition  of 


[    27    ] 

a  force  of  189  "punitive  police" — that  is,  additional  police  paid 
for  by  a  local  tax;  next  year  the  number  reached  375  until  they 
were  dispensed  with  in  August.  By  the  end  of  1886  the  un- 
settlement  due  to  the  war  had  apparently  quietened  down  but 
it  had  left  serious  effects.  The  disorder  had  led  many  villagers 
to  purchase  guns,  often  at  extremely  high  prices;  fearing  that 
these  would  fall  into  the  hands  of  dacoits.  Government  disarmed 
the  district  and  975  guns  were  confiscated  without  compensation. 
Cultivators  were  forbidden  to  live  in  isolated  houses.  "Karen 
levies"  and  punitive  police  were  said  to  force  labour  and  take 
food  without  payment.  The  settlement  of  1882-84  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  ^ 
further  increase  of  land  revenue  in  1884  and  1885  amounting 
to  fifteen  to  twenty  per  cent,  in  the  south  and  thirty-seven  per 
cent,  in  the  north ;  these  were  average  rates  of  increase  and  the 
increases  in  the  first-class  kioins  were  considerably  higher  still. 
Many  villages  had  been  impoverished  by  fines  imposed  upon 
them  under  the  Rural  Police  Act,  while  the  towns  were  alarmed 
at  the  prospect  of  the  imposition  of  an  income-tax.  The 
fisheries  failed  because  of  a  deficient  rise  in  the  river.  Except 
in  the  small  area  of  the  Thonze  circle  the  paddy  crop  of  1887-88 
was  far  below  the  average,  and  a  price  Rs.  13  above  the  average 
of  the  three  previous  years  (when  the  average  Rangoon  price 
was  Rs.  75,  85,  81  respectively)  had  betrayed  many  into  selling 
too  large  a  proportion  of  their  reduced  crop.  The  early  rains  of 
1888  failed  entirely,  so  that  the  cultivators  were  unable  to 
plough  and  were  threatened  with  a  complete  failure  of  their 
crops  and  certainly  saw  little  prospect  of  obtaining  any  early 
rice  to  make  up  for  the  deficiency  in  the  provision  they  had 
saved  from  the  previous  short  harvest.  The  degree  of  poverty 
prevailing  is  indicated  by  the  record  of  numerous  children  being 
transferred  to  persons  ready  to  adopt  them  and  pay  Rs.  5  to 
Rs.  30  for  them.  Thus  political  irritation  was  accompanied  by 
high  economic  tension.  Moreover  the  suppression  of  disorder 
by  measures  which  caused  the  irritation  was  apparent  rather 
than  real ;  crimes  of  violence  had  been  suppressed  but  crimes  of 
stealth  had  replaced  them,  and  in  particular  the  rapid  increase 
of  cattle  thefts  (which  doubled  in  frequency  between  1886  and 
1889)  must  have  added  to  the  troubles  of  the  cultivators.  To 
crown  all,  came  a  severe  epidemic  of  cholera. 


[    28    ] 

Meanwhile  in  1887,  when  superficially  it  seemed  that  order 
had  been  approximately  restored,  the  local  officers  had  begun 
to  issue  freely  licenses  for  fire-arms.  This  premature  relaxation 
resulted  in  a  fresh  outbreak  of  dacoities  which  was  met  by  a 
policy  of  extreme  severity.  Under  the  new  Village  Act  were 
imposed  upon  many  villages  fines,  of  which  the  effect  can  only 
be  judged  fairly  in  the  light  thrown  upon  the  general  dis- 
organisation of  village  administration  at  the  time  by  Sir  Charles 
Crosthwaite's  famous  Minute :  to  villages  which  had  no  corporate 
spirit  but  a  headman  without  power  such  a  fine  must  have 
seemed  not  merely  a  heavy  burden  but  a  gross  injustice.  Special 
powers  were  given  to  the  Deputy  Commissioner  to  carry  sen- 
tences of  death  in  certain  serious  cases  into  immediate  execution. 
Everybody  seems  to  have  thought  at  the  time  that  the  obviously 
right  course  was  being  pursued;  but,  whether  it  was  the  least 
objectionable  course  or  not  there  was  only  one  possible  result 
of  applying  coercion  to  human  beings  who  were  already  suffering 
the  economic  and  political  tension  of  the  time.  Violence  reacted 
to  violence.  There  was  a  general  Burman  belief  at  that  time  in 
an  eventual  restoration  of  Burmese  sovereignty,  and  there  is 
no  suggestion  of  a  specially  disorderly  people  in  the  fact  that 
U  Thuriya  was  able  to  get  a  following  in  an  enterprise  which 
aimed  at  overthrowing  the  comparatively  new  government 
under  whose  regime  such  troubles  were  suffered.  U  Thuriya's 
proclamation  indeed  gave  a  political  reason  for  the  rising;  and 
that  was  commonly  accepted  at  the  time  as  the  explanation  of 
all  the  trouble.  But  even  if  it  was  the  main  reason  in  the  minds 
of  his  followers  (and  this  is  not  certain)  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  rising  was  due  more  to  the  troubles  the  population  was 
enduring  than  to  any  conception  of  Burmese  sovereignty.  It  is 
a  commonplace  now  that  the  true  cause  of  a  rebellion,  as  of  an 
industrial  strike,  is  often  not  the  reason  for  their  action  given 
by  the  discontents.  Just  as  it  is  not  really  the  threatened  extra 
straw  but  the  previously  loaded  portion  of  the  burden  which 
crushes  the  camel,  so  it  is  generally  a  more  firmly  established 
grievance  than  that  which  is  alleged  that  breaks  down  the  patience 
of  a  people.  The  alleged  grievance  may  be  any  trifle  and  the 
people  may  be  entirely  unjustified  in  regarding  it  as  grievance 
at  all ;  yet  even  the  aristocratically-minded  Goethe  declared  that 


[    29    ] 

when  the  people  rebel  the  people  are  always  right.  No  doubt 
every  one  of  Wat  Tyler's  neighbours  was  ready  to  avenge  the 
insult  offered  to  his  daughter  by  the  tax-collector,  but  that  was 
no  reason  why  every  man  from  Kent  to  Norfolk  should  rebel 
against  the  king;  the  Peasants'  Revolt  was  due  to  the  general 
disorganisation  of  the  conditions  of  labour  and  food  production 
and  the  substitution  of  a  level  capitation  tax,  when  the  storm- 
shattered  fleet  had  to  be  repaired,  for  the  graduated  that- 
hameda  which  had  previously  been  collected  to  pay  for  the 
fleet's  construction.  It  is  indeed  curious  how  close  is  the  parallel 
between  the  essential  conditions  in  Tharrawaddy  in  1888  and 
in  England  in  1381.  The  physicists  again  have  shown  us  a 
heavy  cloud  floating  peacefully  in  dust-free  air  precipitated 
immediately  to  rain  by  the  introduction  of  an  ultra-microscopic 
particle  of  dust  or  even  by  a  "particle"  of  electricity.  The 
tiniest  nucleus  is  sufficient  to  start  condensation ;  and  once  that 
is  started  the  whole  cloud  is  forthwith  condensed.  Soo  too 
U  Thuriya  appears  to  have  been  the  condensing  point ;  but  the 
cloud  had  arisen  independently. 

Still,  some  will  say,  there  is  no  smoke  without  a  fire;  there 
must  be  some  soul  of  truth  in  the  reputation  of  Tharrawaddy ; 
there  must  be  something  in  the  people  which  caused  them  to 
react  to  these  economic  difficulties  so  much  more  readily  than 
the  remainder  of  the  province ;  certainly  there  were  more  Upper 
Burmans  there  than  in  other  districts,  and  no  doubt  the  crop 
of  1887  was  better  south  of  Thonze  than  towards  the  north, 
but  were  the  other  conditions  noted  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  difference  between  Tharrawaddy  and  its  neighbour  Hantha- 
waddy  in  which  the  industrialisation  of  agriculture  had  already 
developed  and  the  presence  of  numerous  alien  Indians  holding 
aloof  from  Burman  social  organisation  had  for  many  years  given 
rise  to  much  of  the  recorded  crime  ?  It  may  be  replied  that  the 
irritation  of  Tharrawaddy  by  economic  troubles,  cholera,  and 
martial  law  ruthlessly  applied  was  such  as  would  cause  the 
rebellion  of  any  people  against  any  government,  native  or 
foreign;  that  for  local  reasons  Hanthawaddy  was  exceptionally 
quiet  in  1886  and  most  of  Lower  Burma  was  as  disturbed  then 
as  Tharrawaddy;  that  other  districts  may  have  had  not  less 
disease  but  less  obvious  symptoms ;  that  although  the  physicists' 


[    30    ] 

cloud  will  condense  on  the  most  minute  nucleus  it  will  hold  for 
ever  if  no  nucleus  arises.  There  were  certainly  heavy  clouds  over 
Tharrawaddy,  and  it  so  happened  that  a  nucleus  was  provided 
in  U  Thuriya ;  the  clouds  condensed  and  the  storm  broke.  Why 
did  the  nucleus  appear  in  Tharrawaddy?  Was  that  an  "acci- 
dent" due  to  the  fortuitous  co-operation  of  numerous  inde- 
pendent forces  which  elsewhere  operated  but  did  not  happen 
to  co-operate;  or  does  the  very  appearance  prove  special  local 
conditions?  Unfortunately  the  local  officers  were  so  fully 
occupied  with  action  that  they  had  little  time  for  thought; 
they  reported  how  the  rebels  died,  but  omitted  to  enquire  how 
they  had  lived.  It  did  not  occur  to  them  that  the  biographies 
of  the  rebels  might  have  proved  eventually  more  useful  than 
their  execution. 


V.    THE  ECONOMIC  THEORY 

Ruskin's  declaration  that  the  science  of  political  economy,  as 
then  taught,  was  founded  upon  half-true  dogmas  derived  from 
an  insufficient  examination  in  a  narrow  corner  of  Europe  of  a 
limited  portion  of  the  field  of  economic  phenomena  (which 
was  already  a  restricted  portion  of  the  wider  field  of  social 
phenomena)  was  violently  reprobated  by  the  readers  of  the 
Cornhill  Magazine  in  1861,  and  probably  no  other  magazine 
could  have  dared  then  to  publish  such  matter  at  all ;  it  was  the 
age  of  the  philosophy  of  unrestricted  competition.  The  Suez 
Canal  was  opened  in  1869  andthe  virus  of  competitive  individual- 
ism soon  took  advantage  of  it  to  travel  to  Burma.  As  in  Western 
Europe  its  growth  was  stimulated  by  steam  and  its  most  obvious 
economic  form  was  shown  in  the  development  of  capitalist 
industry.  But  whereas  in  England  its  activities  were  seen  in  the 
field  of  manufactures,  in  Lower  Burma  it  went  to  the  rice-fields 
where  it  eventually  gave  rise  to  the  prevailing  system  of  agri- 
culture of  the  present  day,  which  in  the  Delta,  where  it  has 
been  most  completely  developed,  aims  not  at  the  production 
of  the  maximum  crop  or  the  maximum  benefit  for  all  concerned 
in  its  production,  and  still  less  at  the  maximum  benefit  for  the 
general  community,  but,  regarding  the  cultivator  as  a  mere 
instrument  of  production,  aims  at  the  production  of  the  maxi- 
mum rent.  The  process  has  not  yet  been  carried  so  far  in  Tharra- 
waddy  as  in  the  Delta,  but  even  there  the  figures  given  in  the 
last  settlement  report  (1915)  indicate  that  in  the  plains,  after 
meeting  the  expenses  of  cultivation,  the  balance  in  the  cultiva- 
tor's hands  (for  meeting  the  cost  of  living,  and  of  interest  on 
the  inevitable  loans  to  finance  the  cultivator,  and  for  paying  the 
rent  if  he  is  a  tenant)  averages  about  thirteen  baskets  of  paddy 
per  acre,  while  the  average  rent  is  sixteen.  It  was  observed  that 
the  most  inferior  holdings  were  not  often  let.  But  a  certain 
number  of  holdings,  rented  or  owned,  are  quite  possibly  culti- 
vated at  a  loss,  the  cultivators  obtaining  their  livelihood  by  so- 
called  subsidiary  industries  upon  which  their  paddy  cultivation 
is  parasitic ;  and  the  inclusion  of  returns  from  such  holdings  in 


[    32    ] 

the  statistics  reduces  the  estimated  net  produce.  There  is  also 
a  margin  of  error  due  to  miscellaneous  causes ;  but  the  figures 
are  sufficiently  reliable  to  justify  the  statement  that  the  tenant 
makes  only  the  barest  livelihood  even  when  he  does  not  steadily 
increase  his  debts.  As  no  less  than  two-fifths  of  the  area  is 
cultivated  by  tenants  it  is  clear  that  there  is  economic  stress. 
But  the  matter  does  not  end  with  tenants ;  it  makes  little  differ- 
ence in  the  available  balance  whether  one  pays  rent  to  a  land- 
lord or  interest  to  a  mortgagee,  when  one's  holding  is  fully 
mortgaged.  The  truth  is  that  at  least  one-half  of  the  land  in 
these,  the  principal  tracts  of  the  district,  is  cultivated  by  owners 
or  tenants  who  live  on  the  very  margin  of  subsistence.  Of  the 
tenants  the  Settlement  Officer  found  that  one-half  worked  their 
holdings  for  one  year  only,  and  one-third  for  either  two  or 
three  years  only,  before  leaving  to  hire  a  different  holding,  in 
working  which  they  would  of  course  suffer  all  the  disadvantages 
of  ignorance  of  its  peculiar  properties.  "Short  tenancies,"  he 
writes,  "are  the  commonest  and  are  due  to  competition  among 
tenants  " ;  and  he  somewhat  naively  adds,  "  It  is  a  tendency  that 
makes  for  the  rapid  increase  of  rents."  Really  the  three  pheno- 
mena of  short  tenancies,  competition  and  increase  of  rents  all 
conspire  to  accentuate  each  other.  The  economic  pressure  is 
clearly  indicated  by  the  rapid  expansion  of  cultivation  in  the 
flooded  tracts  of  the  Myitmaka  basin,  considerably  forestalling 
the  advance  of  natural  reclamation  by  taking  up  land  so  liable 
to  serious  flood  that  this  cultivation  is  a  pure  gamble.  Yet  the 
Burman  of  Tharrawaddy,  writes  the  Settlement  Officer,  "  makes 
a  good  and  lenient  landlord,"  reducing  the  rents  in  bad  seasons, 
not  carrying  on  any  unpaid  portions  as  a  debt  to  be  settled  at 
the  next  good  harvest  as  in  parts  of  the  Delta.  The  conditions 
in  fact  are  not  due  to  extraordinary  greed  on  the  part  of  the 
landlords,  who  are  not  generally  large  capitalists,  but  who  often 
are  widows  and  orphans  of  cultivators  or  aged  or  infirm 
cultivators  themselves;  they  are  due  to  the  whole  social  and 
economic  system  which  is  based  upon  ruthless  unrestricted 
competition,  and  while  it  organises  production  entirely  dis- 
regards all  considerations  of  distribution  and  consumption,  and 
does  not  even  consider  whether  it  is  producing  the  most  desir- 
able products. 


[    33    ] 

With  this  system  goes  the  practice  of  employing  agricultural 
labourers  separately  and  on  a  casual  basis  for  each  separate 
stage  in  the  process  of  production,  that  being  the  cheapest 
method  of  production  in  the  eyes  of  a  community  which  dis- 
regards all  nauseous  social  bye-products.  The  labourers  compete 
for  work,  and  the  older  men  are  ousted  by  their  more  vigorous 
juniors  and  go  to  swell  the  competition  for  tenancies.  Thus  the 
transition  from  labourer  or  tenant  to  owner,  which  was  formerly 
"a  comparatively  simple  matter,  is  now  almost  impossible." 
The  price  of  paddy  has  risen;  but  the  tenant  is  no  better  off 
because  the  keen  competition  for  tenancies  allows  no  better 
margin  for  his  subsistence  than  before.  Meanwhile  the  labourer 
suffers  by  the  rise  of  price,  because,  although  he  is  normally 
paid  in  paddy  for  the  most  important  part  of  his  agricultural 
labour,  he  takes  his  wages  in  practice  as  cash  advances  on  the 
sabape  system.  He  receives  his  own  food  at  his  employer's 
house,  but  his  wife  and  children  must  buy  their  rice  at  an  in- 
creasing price.  As  the  price  rises  a  larger  cash  equivalent  for 
his  paddy  wages  is  received  by  the  labourer  but  the  rise  in  the 
sabape  rate  naturally  lags  behind  the  rise  in  price.  The  diffi- 
culties of  the  labourer  are  increased  by  the  importation  for 
parts  of  the  work  of  Indian  labour,  which  having  a  lower  standard 
of  living,  undersells  him.  A  certain  number  of  Burman  labourers 
thus  fail  to  find  employment  for  part  of  the  season ;  the  com- 
petition even  in  those  branches  in  which  Indians  are  not 
employed  is  thus  intensified  and  the  standard  of  living  is 
dragged  down  until  Burmans  have  begun  to  compete  with 
Indians  by  combining  in  gangs  working  for  an  Indian  wage. 
Meanwhile  the  growing  wealth  of  the  land-owning  and  capital- 
owning  classes  heightens,  by  the  contrasts  it  engenders,  the 
resulting  discontent  of  the  poor. 

The  economic  conditions  here  shortly  described  are  those 
universally  recognised  as  conducive  to  the  development  of 
crime  in  an  agricultural  community.  These  conditions  are 
developed  moreover  in  greater  or  less  degree  precisely  in  those 
districts  of  Lower  Burma  in  which  crime  is  heaviest ;  and  they 
began  to  develop  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century 
or  about  the  time  the  present  chronic  state  of  crime  in  those 
districts  began  to  develop.   In  some  other  parts  of  India  there 


[    34    ] 

-  was  a  somewhat  similar  change  in  agricultural  economics  which 

(was  not  accompanied  by  an  outbreak  of  crime;  but  there  the 
new  economic  forces  were  introduced  more  gradually,  and  their 
action  was  modified  by  the  caste  system.    In  the  Ma-ubin 
District,  which  has  developed  less  crime  in  proportion  to  its 
population  than  the  other  delta  districts,  paddy  cultivation  is 
.less  important  in  comparison  with  the  fisheries  than  in  those. 
f  Turning  to  the  Insein  and  Syriam  Districts  it  is  found  that  in 
1  1872,  as  a  result  of  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal  three  years 
{  before,  rice  began  to  be  sent  to  Europe  in  steamboats  and 
Vseventeen  steam  rice-mills  were  working  in  Rangoon,  where 
there  had  been  only  two  before;  there  was  a  rapid  and  large 
extension  of  rice-cultivation,  and  a  large  and  increasing  crop 
of  dacoity  and  theft  began  to  be  produced  immediately  there- 
after.   Hence  the  theory  that  the  crime  of  Lower  Burma  is 
due  to  the  development  of  industrial  agriculture,  of  "factories 
without  chimneys."   Those  who  believe  that  Tharrawaddy  has 
never  been    orderly   must,  however,  find  some   difficulty  in 
accepting  this  explanation ;  while  those  who  are  acquainted  with 
the  true  record  also  find  difficulties. 

The  influence  of  the  economic  conditions  is  undoubted.  The 
disorder  of  1853  was  political  in  origin,  but  the  robberies  were 
ascribed  by  the  Deputy  Commissioner  at  the  time  to  scarcity 
of  food.  The  subsequent  minor  outbreaks  of  disorder  were 
generally  due  to  poHtical  unrest  or  contagion.  In  1878  to  1880 
the  causes  which  were  enumerated  in  the  fourth  of  these  studies 
included  anxiety  about  the  enhancements  of  land-revenue. 
In  1888  the  political  tension  was  accompanied  by  acute  economic 
stress.  The  beginning  of  the  present  chronic  condition  in  1894 
coincided  very  significantly  with  the  combination  of  a  deficit 
of  one-fourth  in  the  harvest  and  a  bad  market  for  the  crop. 
(The  average  prices  in  Tharrawaddy  for  the  harvest  seasons  of 
1889  to  1899  were  89,  85,  89,  124,  77,  73,  98,  96,  121,  96,  90.) 
In  1 90 1  to  1903  there  were  large  increases  in  land -revenue  due 
to  revision  of  the  settlement ;  and  some  of  these  took  place  un- 
fortunately in  1902  which  was  the  second  of  two  years  of  a 
bad  paddy  market,  while  in  a  small  area  the  increases  of  1905 
had  afterwards  to  be  reduced  in  spite  of  the  general  subsequent 
rise  in  paddy  prices.  The  meaning  of  these  increases  can  only 


[   35    ] 

be  understood  in  the  light  of  knowledge  of  the  vagaries  of  the 
soil-classifiers  in  the  earlier  settlements;  the  average  increases 
were  not  uniform  increases  applying  everywhere,  but  were  the 
resultant  of  small  increases  or  even  decreases  in  some  holdings 
and  much  larger  increases  in  others,  in  which,  even  if  the  yield 
of  the  land  justified  and  demanded  the  increase,  the  consequent 
change  in  the  standard  of  living  would  be  a  serious  matter,  and 
if  the  increase  resulted  from  an  error  of  the  soil-classifiers  the 
seriousness  would  be  immensely  enhanced.  The  importance 
of  this  was  the  greater,  as  in  those  days  only  a  small  part  of  the 
land  was  cultivated  by  tenants  to  whom  the  revenue  demand 
was  of  no  consequence;  and  the  misfortune  of  a  low  paddy 
price  in  1902  made  the  matter  particularly  acute.  It  is  possible 
that  the  great  increase  of  crime  which  took  place  about  this 
time,  and  led  to  an  increase  of  the  police  force  by  1 1 1  men  in 
1904  was  in  part  due  to  that.  There  was,  however,  a  system  of 
intermediate  rates  to  mitigate  the  enhancements;  and  this 
though  unsatisfactory  under  the  recent  settlements  was  effective 
under  the  conditions  of  those  times,  and  though  it  could  not 
remove  the  hardship  in  the  cases  of  erroneous  soil-classifica- 
tion, postponed  it.  And  the  revenue  even  when  erroneous  was 
not  so  high  as  the  rents  subsequently  came  to  be,  and  in  any 
case  its  enhancement  came  into  action  only  ten  years  after  the 
outbreak  of  crime.  Moreover  the  settlements  of  other  districts 
were  on  similar  fines  and  accompanied  by  similar  conditions. 

The  great  increase  in  crime  in  1894  was  not  confined  to 
Tharrawaddy  but  was  general  throughout  Lower  Burma  and 
marks  the  beginning  in  all  that  part  of  the  province  of  the  present 
serious  crime  production,  the  development  of  which  has  coin- 
cided roughly  with  the  development  of  industrial  agriculture. 
But  there  is  the  difficulty  that  the  latter  has  not  developed  so 
far  in  Tharrawaddy  and  Prome  as  in  the  Insein,  Syriam  and 
Pegu  Districts  whose  crime  record,  though  bad,  is  not  nearly 
so  bad  as  theirs  in  spite  of  the  stimulus  given  to  crime  by  the 
proximity  of  the  large  towns  of  Rangoon,  Pegu,  Insein  and 
Syriam.  An  explanation  can  be  furnished  in  Prome  in  the 
economic  difficulties  arising  long  ago  from  the  smallness  of  the 
holdings,  the  poor  soil  and  rainfall  and  uncertain  harvests,  the 
large  number  of  toddy  palms,  and  the  densest  and  most  laborious 

3—2 


[   36   ] 

rural  population  in  Lower  Burma;  and  these  conditions  apply 
in  part  to  the  northern  portions  of  Tharrawaddy.  But  it  is  not 
possible  to  assign  all  the  crime  to  that  portion,  representing 
perhaps  one-fourth  of  the  district.  In  the  remaining  three- 
fourths,  where  the  economic  conditions  of  Prome  do  not  apply, 
it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  economic  conditions  are  of  great 
importance ;  but  for  the  success  of  the  theory  of  the  domination 
of  economic  causes  it  is  necessary  to  explain  how  the  chronic 
development  of  crime  has  been  so  much  greater  than  in  other 
districts  in  which  the  characteristic  economic  conditions  began 
earlier  and  have  been  so  much  further  developed,  and  also  how 
it  began  in  1894  when  the  development  of  those  conditions  in 
the  Tharrawaddy  District  was  still  rudimentary. 


VI.    SOCIAL  DISORGANISATION 

In  1852-3,  when  the  British  administration  began,  the  popula- 
tion of  Tharrawaddy  proper  was  said  to  be  10,000  persons  Uving 
in  2500  houses,  while  Sarawah  had  3500  persons  more.  In 
1872  the  population  ot  the  present  area  of  the  Tharrawaddy 
District,  which  differs  only  a  little  from  the  sum  of  those  two 
areas ,  was  171 ,000 ;  in  1 88 1  it  was  272 ,000 ;  in  1 89 1  it  was  339 ,000 
or  approximately  double  that  of  1872.  In  all  the  old  districts 
a  similar  increase  occurred.  But  there  was  no  corresponding 
development  of  social  organisation;  on  the  contrary  the 
kyedangyi  became  (in  the  words  of  Sir  Charles  Crosthwaite)  a 
mere  village  drudge  without  power  and  influence,  and  all 
traces  of  village  responsibility  were  lost.  The  old  thugyi  had 
become  a  revenue  official,  no  longer  possessing  either  minute 
local  knowledge  of,  or  personal  influence  in,  every  part  of  his 
circle.  There  was  nothing  remarkable  in  all  this;  it  was  a  direct 
result  of  the  increased  population  which  could  no  longer  be 
successfully  organised  on  the  old  lines,  and  of  the  nature  of  the 
kyedangyVs  office,  which  brought  many  unpleasant  duties  but 
neither  emolument  nor  honour.  The  Village  Act  was  designed 
to  substitute  for  the  kyedangyi^  a  village  headman  who  would 
be  the  leader  and  representative  of  the  community.  But  in 
fact  the  Community  has  failed  in  most  villages  to  develop.  As 
Disraeli  told  us:  " Gregariousness  is  not  association."  The 
tradition  of  a  corporate  village  life  had  been  broken  and  could 
not  be  re-established  by  the  methods  of  the  Village  Act. 

Sir  Charles  Crosthwaite  repeatedly  emphasised  the  importance 
of  the  non-official  character  of  the  headman  who  should  be  the 
repBCsentative  and  leader  of  the  village,  and  the  Village  Act 
carefully  subordinated  the  villagers  to  the  headman  and  not 
to  the  officials,  who  were  given  only  the  power  to  demand  the 
co-operation  of  the  headman  in  certain  directions ;  but  headman, 
rural  policeman  and  villager,  all  alike  received  nothing  but  duties 
and  penalties  under  the  Act.  It  is  true  that,  in  prescribing  some 
duties,  such  as  assistance  to  travellers,  it  limited  the  demands 


[    38    ] 

that  could  be  made ;  but  no  positive  privilege  of  any  kind  was 
conferred  by  the  Act  save  an  exemption  from  some  kinds  of 
personal  service  for  persons  "not  of  the  labouring  class  and 
accustomed  to  do  such  work  as  may  be  required."    The  in- 
evitable development  of  this  has  been  that  the  wealthier  villagers 
have   become   immune   from   the   headman's   requisition   for 
practically  all  the  duties  of  villagers — a  remarkable  instance  of 
one  law  for  the  rich  and  another  for  the  poor— and  consequently 
have  tended  to  stand  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  villagers  instead 
"of  sharing  in  the  common  life  with  responsibilities  proportionate 
to  their  privileges.  But  even  apart  from  this  mistake  it  was  not 
possible  to  develop  a  corporate  spirit  by  imposing  on  the  head- 
man duties  towards  an  external  Government,  and  on  the  villagers 
the  duty  of  assisting  him  in  executing  them.    Corporate  life 
has  never  yet  grown  out  of  anything  contained  in  the  Village ' 
Let,  and  never  will.   Wherever  a  corporate  village  spirit  exists 
it  will  be  found  to  have  developed  in  carrying  out  some  common 
project,  such  as  the  erection  of  a  monastery  or  the  construction 
of  a  brick  path  or  jetty,  the  personal  qualities  of  the  headman 
for  the  time  being  (or  of  some  other  villager)  giving  rise  tem- 
porarily to  an  association  of  the  people  under  his  leadership. 
But  corporate  life  is  more  than  that;  it  demands  an  enduring 
/  ^  consciousness  of  unity  amongst  the  changing  individuals  of 
/       the  group.    If,  instead  of  providing  a  Village  Act  to  deal  with 
I       disturbed  periods,  some  definite  endeavour  to  organise  and 
\      humanise  village  life  at  ordinary  times  had  been  made  while 
\     the  economic  conditions  were  not  yet  acute,  it  is  possible  that 
\  some  sort  of  corporate  life  might  have  been  regenerated.   But 
\^he  Village  Act  not  only  failed  in  itself;  it  prevented  the  con- 
sideration  of  alternative  methods  and  no  general  corporate  life 
/  resulted.  Without  corporate  life  there  cannot  be  such  a  public 
/     opinion   that   disorderly   persons  "would   find   no  sympathy 
I      among  the  people  and  would  soon  be  disposed  of  by  them  "  as 
I      in  Tharrawaddy  in  1873.   Such  a  public  opinion  is  much  more 
\     than  the  sum  of  the  opinions  of  the  individuals.   But  the  effect 
\    of  a  failure  to  repress  crime  is  cumulative  on  account  of  the 
\  example  which  each  crime  sets  to  imitative  minds,  and  of  the 
\general  power  of  suggestion  which  is  heightened  by  the  apparent 
ii;nmunity  of  the  transgressors. 


[   39    ] 

The  increasingly  unequal  distribution  of  wealth  due  to  the 
economic  conditions  has  done  more  than  provide  temptation 
to  thieves.  It  has  directly  attacked  what  corporate  spirit  there 
was  in  the  villages.   No  doubt  the  Burmese  village  had  always 

V  treated  its  wealthier  members  in  some  ways  as  a  special  class, 
Vbut  with  the  new  economic  development  grew  the  custom  of 

the  wealthier  associating  rather  with  the  similar  members  of 
neighbouring  villages  than  with  other  economic  grades  of  their 
own  village.  Partly  as  a  result  of  this  came  the  tendency  for 
the  well-to-do  to  become  concentrated  in  particular  villages, 

V  leaving  the  other  villages  to  the  poor — who  were  thus  deprived 
at  once  of  their  leadership  and  of  their  charity  and  subscriptions 
to  village  ceremonies  and  public  improvements. 

The  failure  of  the  Village  Act  to  provide  any  basis  of  social 
organisation  for  Lower  Burma  has  been  repeated  on  all  sides. 
Even  the  fundamental  condition  for  healthy  village  life,  that 
there  should  be  land  for  the  village  to  stand  upon,  has  been 
neglected.  Old-established  villages  are  cramped  and  cannot 
expand  because  cultivation  touches  them  on  all  sides,  no  trouble 
having  been  taken  to  provide  for  the  increase  of  population, 
the  inevitability  of  which  should  have  been  so  obvious.  Other 
hamlets  have  been  squeezed  into  odd  corners  of  unproductive 
land,  which  in  the  Delta  is  commonly  flooded.  Many  people 
have  been  forced  to  beg  permission  to  build  a  hut  on  the  edge 
of  somebody's  paddy-land  from  which  they  are  liable  to  be 
evicted  at  any  moment.  Not  only  these  but  old-established 
hamlets  on  land  to  which  the  evicting  cultivator  has  no  valid 
title  whatsoever  are  actually  evicted  every  year,  and  the  evictions 
are  enforced  in  the  Civil  Courts.  Naturally  the  eviction  takes 
place  at  the  beginning  of  the  ploughing  season,  and  the  evicted 
families  are  shelterless  from  the  rains  unless  they  can  find  some- 
body, probably  at  a  distance  from  their  work  and  with  a  house 
already  fully  occupied,  ready  to  take  them  in.  And  with  the 
removal  goes  often  the  loss  of  occupation.  Half  a  sympathetic 
eye  could  have  seen  that  the  more  cultivation  extended  the  more 
necessary  it  was  to  reserve  village-land  against  it.  But  with  a 
shortage  even  of  house-room  where  will  the  villagers  meet  to 
enjoy  that  intercourse  from  which  alone  corporate  feeling  can 
spring?    Will  corporate  feeling  arise  from  putting  around  a 


[   40    ] 

village  a  fence  which  constantly  accentuates  the  congestion? 
What  kind  of  site  and  premises  has  the  ordinary  lay  school,  and 
even  many  a  monastery  school  ? 

The  breakdown  of  social  organisation  in  Lower  Burma  gener- 
ally can  be  traced  in  other  directions  too,  but  the  general  result 
is  the  same.  Steadily  growing  with  the  increase  of  population, 
and  particularly  because  that  was  due  so  much  to  immigration 
from  diverse  parts,  it  has  been  stimulated  by  the  economic  con- 
ditions. In  1888  the  old  organisation  was  already,  according  to 
Sir  Charles  Crosthwaite,  ineffective  for  repressing  crime.  The 
new  organisation,  which  he  set  up,  was  competent  only  to 
repress  and  in  some  measure  to  discourage  by  making  the  con- 
ditions more  difficult ;  it  could  not  regenerate  the  lost  corporate 
life  and  organise  public  opinion.  The  social  and  economic  dis- 
organisations were  either  alone  sufficient  to  give  rise  to  crime; 
and  their  interaction  was  still  more  potent  even  apart  from  their 
mutual  stimulus.  It  is  impossible  now  to  separate  their  effects; 
but  the  earlier  failure  of  social  organisation  explains  in  part  why 
the  crime  epidemic  of  Lower  Burma  began  before  the  economic 
conditions  were  fully  developed,  and  the  stimulus  of  those 
conditions  explains  its  large  growth  and  the  failure  of  the 
means  adopted  for  its  repression. 

The  weakening  of  parental  control  over  the  young  has  often 
been  suggested  as  a  prolific  cause  of  crime ;  and  it,  in  its  turn,  is 
said  to  be  due  to  the  widespread  change  to  teaching  in  lay  schools 
from  teaching  in  monastery  schools,  where,  it  is  believed,  children 
were  taught  to  reverence  and  respect  their  elders.  But  it  is  not 
alone  in  Burma  that  elderly  persons  are  apt  to  think  that  they 
in  their  youth  were  much  superior  in  politeness  and  respect  for 
their  elders  to  the  wild  youngsters  who  treat  them  so  badly  to-day. 
Most  readers  of  this  paragraph  have  probably  heard  pointed 
expression  given  to  the  same  idea  occasionally  in  their  own  youth 
— and  were  ready  enough  then  to  be  sceptical;  and  it  is  quite 
possible  the  same  idea  was  expressed,  and  received  with  the 
same  scepticism  in  Neanderthal.  The  statement  that  Burman 
children  have  less  respect  than  formerly  for  their  parents  and 
elders  is  certainly  to  be  accepted,  if  at  all,  only  with  some  dis- 
count. How  far,  if  it  is  true,  it  accounts  for  an  increase  of  crime 
is  another  matter,  and  it  is  still  another  question  whether  it  is 


[   41    ] 

due  to  the  change  from  religious  to  lay  schools.  There  are  other 
factors  at  work.  As  in  all  other  countries  moral  teaching  is 
largely  referred  for  a  basis  to  custom.  In  undeveloped  minds 
law  and  custom  are  identical,  as  indeed  they  were  in  the  early 
history  of  the  race.  For  many  reasons  (chiefly  economic) 
numerous  customs  have  fallen  out  of  use  in  recent  years.  But 
originally  all  customs  had  equal  sanctity ;  thus  the  abrogation  of 
any  custom,  even  if  it  is  only  a  relic  of  spirit-worship,  tends  to 
diminish  the  sanctity  of  other  customs ;  and  owing  to  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  ideas  the  authority  of  law — both  in  the  legal  and 
in  the  moral  sense — is  diminished  too,  and  so  also  is  that  of  the 
moral  injunctions  of  parents.  Further  it  is  not  clear  that  the 
monastery  schools  had  so  very  much  influence  in  the  direction 
of  inculcating  respect  for  others  than  priests ;  and  so  far  as  moral 
instruction  goes  it  is  at  least  doubtful  whether  the  frequent 
gabbling  of  half-understood  phrases  was  any  more  beneficial  in 
Burma  than  it  has  been  found  elsewhere.  It  is  doubtful  how 
far  the  lav  schools  have  proved  themselves  inferior  in  character- 
formation  to  the  monastery  schools.  There  is  certainly  a  natural 
tendency  for  the  young  to  grow  conceited  about  the  superiority 
conferred  by  their  vast  knowledge,  and  to  rate  less  highly  than 
is  proper  the  moral  instruction  of  their  less  educated  parents 
and  elders ;  but  this  difliculty  is  to  be  met  by  so  improving  the 
economic  conditions  of  parents  that  they  may  have  more  time 
and  energy  to  devote  to  the  training  of  children,  by  the  exhibi- 
tion of  moral  superiority  on  the  part  of  elders  and  by  direct 
teaching  about  this  temptation  to  conceit  in  the  schools — in  fact 
by  teaching  more  and  not  by  preferring  schools  which  teach  less. 
The  principal  advantage  of  the  monastery  schools  lies  really 
in  the  discipline  involved  in  processions  to  collect  gifts  and 
more  particularly  in  keeping  the  school  and  its  compound  clean 
and  attending  to  its  garden.  But  all  the  world  over  it  is  the 
custom  for  parents  to  blame  the  teacher  for  an  alleged  failure 
to  teach  the  children  manners  and  morals,  and  for  the  teacher 
to  retort  that  the  parents  have  better  opportunities  than  the 
teachers  for  doing  this.  And  the  teachers  are  largely  right. 
Much  of  the  school-time  even  in  the  monasteries  of  Burma  is 
occupied  with  instruction  in  nothing  of  greater  ethical  value 
than  the  alphabet  and  arithmetic,  and  whether  the  child  is 


[   42    ] 

taught  in  a  monastery  or  in  a  lay  school  the  influence  of  the 
parents  is  greater  than  that  of  the  teacher.  Every  animal 
responds  most  readily  to  the  influence  of  its  feeders.  The 
Burman  child  has  always  received  most  of  his  training  from  his 
parents,  and  the  teaching  of  the  priests  would  be  of  no  use  at 
all  without  the  parents'  moral  support.  In  any  case  it  is  difficult 
to  believe  that  the  change  in  the  channel  of  education  had 
proceeded  so  far  by  1885-90  as  to  influence  seriously  the  out- 
burst of  crime  which  took  place  in  1894  throughout  the  province. 
If  it  is  thought  that  though  this  change  did  not  stimulate  the 
original  outbreak  it  has  had  important  influence  in  maintaining 
the  production  of  crime,  there  is  still  the  difliculty  that  it  has 
taken  place  in  every  district  in  the  province  and  cannot  therefore 
be  a  main  cause  of  the  particularly  serious  crime  record  of 
Tharrawaddy. 

So  too  with  the  whole  failure  of  social  organisation,  which, 
like  the  economic  development,  is  much  more  marked  in  the 
delta  districts  than  in  Tharrawaddy.  The  house-site  problem 
alone,  which  is  a  small  matter  in  Tharrawaddy  compared  with 
the  delta  districts,  makes  an  immense  difference.  Many  newly- 
colonised  parts  of  the  delta  too  have  never  been  organised ;  and 
in  parts  the  diverse  origin  of  the  colonists  is  emphasised  by 
the  addition  of  a  foreign  element.  Neither  economic  nor  social 
disorganisation  therefore  can  be  a  complete  explanation  of  the 
even  more  prolific  development  of  crime  in  Tharrawaddy  than 
in  the  rest  of  Lower  Burma. 


VII.    GHOSTS 

"  Ghosts... all  sorts  of  dead  ideas  and  lifeless  old  beliefs.... They  cling 
to  us  and  we  can't  get  rid  of  them."    (Ibsen.) 

When  Razadarit  the  Talaing  King  of  Pegu  defeated  the  in- 
vading Burman  army  of  Mingyiswa,  King  of  Ava,  at  Hlaing  in 
1386  he  carried  the  pursuit  as  far  as  Prome,  but  effected  no 
permanent  occupation  of  what  is  now  the  Tharrawaddy  District. 
This  remained  as  it  had  previously  been  a  no-man's  land 
between  the  two  kingdoms,  invaded  by  both  parties  but  de- 
finitely occupied  by  neither,  until  1 405 ,  when  a  definite  boundary 
was  drawn  between  the  kingdoms  of  Pegu  and  Ava  which  gave 
Tharrawaddy  to  the  latter.  About  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century  the  governor  of  Prome,  taking  advantage  of  Ava's  pre- 
occupation with  the  Chinese  invasion,  founded  the  independent 
petty  kingdom  of  Prome,  which  included  Tharrawaddy  and 
was  a  constant  source  of  trouble  to  the  kings  of  Ava  till  it  was 
annexed  by  Burin  Naung  in  1542-3.  From  that  date  until  its 
conquest  by  Alompra  in  1753  Tharrawaddy  was  a  principality 
of  the  second  Talaing  Empire  of  Pegu ;  and  after  that  conquest 
it  continued  as  a  principality  of  the  Burmese  Empire.  It  differed 
from  the  area  of  the  present  district  by  the  exclusion  of  the 
narrow  strip,  only  about  eight  miles  wide,  along  the  river  bank, 
reaching  from  Tharrawaw  to  Monyo  and  Yegin-Mingyi 
(Laukzeya),  and  forming  the  division  of  Sarawah. 

Nowadays  Sarawah  is  a  strip  of  flooded  land,  sparsely  in- 
habited and  producing  a  poor  crop  of  paddy  and  a  certain 
amount  of  miscellaneous  crops  grown  in  the  dry  season  after 
the  floods  subside,  but  formerly  parts  of  it  were  very  fertile. 
The  change  occurred  when  the  bunding  of  the  right  bank  of 
the  Irrawaddy  in  1867  raised  the  level  of  that  river  and  caused 
a  large  volume  of  its  water  to  escape  over  its  left  bank.  But  in 
view  of  the  benefits  derived  from  that  bunding  elsewhere  this 
fertile  strip  of  Sarawah  was  readily  sacrificed ;  it  did  not  occupy 
the  whole  of  Sarawah  but  was  only  two  to  three  miles  wide  at 
the  most,  and  sloped  rapidly  down  towards  the  valley  of  the 


[   44    ] 

Myitmaka  or  Hlaing  river  on  the  east.  This  valley  forms  now 
a  second  strip  of  land  about  eight  miles  wide,  having  that  river 
running  through  the  middle  of  it  and  lying  still  lower  than  the 
flooded  cultivated  area  round  Tharrawaw.  It  extends  the  whole 
length  of  the  district  and,  being  flooded  every  year  to  a  depth 
of  four  to  fifteen  feet,  is  at  present  completely  unculturable 
and  furnishes  nothing  besides  insects  and  fish  and  those  annoying 
breaches  in  the  Tharrawaw  branch  of  the  railway.  It  forms  a 
dismal  swamp  which  is  one  of  the  most  obvious  physical 
characteristics  of  the  district. 

But  a  second  characteristic  physical  feature  of  the  district  is 
the  failure  of  so  many  of  the  streams  which  descend  the  western 
face  of  the  Pegu  Yoma  to  reach  the  channel  of  the  Myitmaka. 
On  approaching  the  low  strip  in  which  that  river  lies  they  nearly 
all  spread  out  and  form  a  thegaw^  which  is  a  wide  accumulation- 
of  detritus  and  forest  refuse  brought  down  by  the  water  and 
deposited  so  as  to  fill  up  the  river  bed.  Across  these  deposits 
the  water  flows  in  a  thin  sheet  with  here  and  there  small  channels 
which  in  their  turn  are  silted  up  to  cause  an  ever  widening 
extension  of  the  accretion.  Such  accretion  has  had  of  course 
a  marked  efl^ect  upon  the  level  of  the  country ;  and  the  infer- 
ence that  the  level  between  the  present  railway  line  and  the 
Myitmaka  was  formerly  much  lower  is  of  prime  importance  in 
the  study  of  the  history  of  the  district.  Not  only  was  the  level 
lower,  but  the  swamp  was  wider.  Mr  Leete,  when  Conservator 
of  Forests  in  the  Pegu  Circle,  made  a  close  study  of  these  rivers, 
and  stated  in  19 14  with  reference  to  practically  all  those  north 
of  the  Thonze  chaung  that  forty  years  before  all  these  streams 
had  thegaws  close  to  the  railway  line.  But  the  railway  line  is 
now  the  central  line  of  the  cultivated  central  plain  of  the  district. 
It  is  probable  therefore  that  sixty  years  earlier  still  the  thegaws 
were  on  the  east  of  the  railway  line,  and  one  begins  to  under- 
stand how  Kunbaungmin  could  make  boat-racing  an  excuse 
for  the  congregation  of  so  many  followers  at  Myodwin,  eight 
miles  east  of  Gyobingauk.  One  can  also  appreciate  better  the 
situation  of  Myodwin,  which  appears  now  to  be  so  out-of-the 
way  but  was  really  in  earlier  times  comparatively  central.  The 
reason  why  the  only  objects  of  archaeological  interest  in  the 
district  are  at  Laukzeya  near  Yegin-Mingyi  and  at  Myodwin, 


[   45   ] 

and  even  so  date  only  from  about  1830  and  1843,  is  the  existence 
in  earlier  times  of  this  marsh,  much  wider  than  at  present,  ex- 
tending the  whole  length  of  the  district  and  dividing  the  popu- 
lated area  into  the  narrow  riverine  strip  which  formed  the  Sara- 
wah  division  of  Burmese  times  and  a  malarious  fringe  along  the 
foot  of  the  Yoma  which  formed  the  Tharrawaddy  principality. 
The  present  central  paddy  plain  has  been  built  up  quite  recently 
by  the  steady  advance  of  the  thegaws  which  although  it  has  been 
partially  checked  by  the  changes  caused  in  the  Irrawaddy- 
Myitmaka  nexus  by  the  Henzada  embankments  (seriously  begun 
about  1863)  has  been  as  rapid  as  was  noted  by  Mr  Leete.  The 
low  marsh  which  formerly  occupied  the  situation  of  this  plain 
furnishes,  in  conjunction  with  the  malarious  nature  of  the  terai, 
the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  while  a  Burman  civilisation 
developed  to  the  north  in  Prome,  and  a  Taking  civilisation  to 
the  south  in  Hanthawaddy,  and  although  these  two  civilisations 
often  came  into  conflict,  ordinary  intercourse  between  them 
took  place  almost  entirely  by  the  river  route.  Even  in  1825  the 
British  column  advancing  by  land  turned  to  meet  the  river  force 
at  Tharrawaw  because  of  the  enhanced  difficulties  in  their 
progress  through  the  Tharrawaddy  area.  Tharrawaddy  re- 
mained a  comparatively  undeveloped  no-man's  land  between 
Prome  and  Hanthawaddy  with  a  population  which  in  1852 
numbered  only  ten  thousand. 

Such  conditions  could  not  be  without  an  effect  upon  the 
development  of  the  Tharrawaddy  inhabitants.  Clearly  their 
occupations  would  not  develop  on  quite  the  same  lines  as  in 
level  Hanthawaddy  near  the  populous  centres  of  Pegu,  Syriam 
and  Rangoon,  or  as  in  the  populous  and  highly  cultivated  plains 
of  Prome  and  Hmawza  whence  rice  was  exported  to  Upper 
Burma.  Up  in  the  hills  were  isolated  Karen  groups  as  there  are 
to-day  all  along  the  Pegu  Yoma ;  but  in  Tharrawaddy  even  in 
the  less  elevated  parts  the  ordinary  man  only  cultivated  for 
subsistence  and  derived  the  satisfaction  of  a  large  part  of  his 
wants  from  wild  vegetation  and  from  hunting  and  fishing.  The 
civilised  strip  was  so  narrow  that  every  one  in  it  was  in  direct 
contact  with  wild  and  sometimes  fierce  Nature,  and  these 
conditions  held  up  till  after  the  British  occupation  began. 
Further  there  was  the  difference  of  the  degree  of  control  exer- 


[   46    ] 

cised  by  the  Government  in  such  an  area  and  in  the  comparatively 
open  areas  nearer  the  seats  of  Government  in  Upper  Burma  or 
the  ports  of  Lower  Burma.  Reaction  to  environment  is  the  essen- 
tial character  of  life  of  which,  therefore,  evolution  in  some  form 
is  a  necessary  quality.  It  is  now  being  more  and  more  recognised 
that  animal  evolution,  however  it  may  be  with  plant  evolution,  is 
only  secondarily  an  affair  of  bodily  structure ;  primarily  it  is  an 
affair  of  mental  structure  to  which  bodily  structure  has  adapted 
itself.  The  human  mind  seems  to  be  endowed  with  a  number  of 
general  emotions  and  instincts  supplemented  by  a  large  capacity 
for  adaptation  to  its  environment  which  leads  to  the  development 
of  a  mental  structure  corresponding  to  their  environment  and 
occupations  in  the  inhabitants  of  every  locality.  Succeeding 
experiences  overlay  with  modifications  the  developments  and 
modifications  due  to  earlier  experiences,  giving  rise  at  last  to 
a  mentality  in  which  the  earliest  qualities  are  greatly  modified. 
But  although  modified  they  continue  to  play  a  part;  the  new 
structure  is  definitely  a  modified  development  of  the  old  and 
not  a  substitute  for  it.  In  each  stage  of  evolution  there  is  a 
survival  of  the  forms  which  have  the  most  successful  innate 
tendencies  to  form  the  corresponding  mental  structure;  while 
each  individual  recapitulates,  though  perhaps  roughly  and 
imperfectly,  the  stages  passed  by  his  ancestors.  There  thus 
develops  in  each  locality  a  mental  type  with  characteristic 
qualities,  traditions  and  ideals  due  to  the  history  of  the  con- 
tinued mutual  reaction  between  existing  mental  structures  and 
environment  and  the  occupations  practised.  Thus  from  the 
social  and  family  co-operation  of  the  densely-populated  paddy 
plains  of  China  sprang  the  Confucian  ethics  of  co-operation 
and  social  service.  The  pastoral  life  of  Judaea  furnished  in  the 
good  shepherd  that  giveth  his  life  for  the  sheep  a  model  of 
self-sacrifice.  The  proximity  of  every  part  of  England  to  the 
sea  and  the  mistiness  of  her  atmosphere  have  led  to  the  pro- 
duction of  a  race  which  knows  no  limits  in  its  pursuit  of 
adventure  in  the  sphere  either  of  travel  or  of  the  imagination. 
What  kind  of  mental  structure  is  to  be  expected  under  the 
conditions  of  the  Tharrawaddy  District?  What  character 
traditions  and  ideals  should  be  formed  there  ? 

No  doubt  in  quite  primitive  times  hunting  for  food  was  one 


[   47    ] 

of  the  principal  occupations  of  every  human  pack ;  but  as  semi- 
agricultural  habits  were  contracted  in  settlements  in  a  milder 
environment  growing  steadily  more  mild  the  old  clan  system 
died  out,  and,  as  the  wild  produce  of  the  immediate  neighbour- 
hood of  a  particular  spot,  though  supplemented  by  the  products 
of  cultivation,  could  only  support  a  limited  number,  the  settle- 
ments would  be  of  limited  size.  Within  each  small  group  there 
would  be  practised  co-operation,  but  in  relations  with  every 
other  group  there  would  be  a  strong  leaning  to  competition. 
Where  pastoral  or  agricultural  habits  were  largely  developed 
the  mental  structure  of  the  people  would  be  modified ;  but  in 
the  degree  in  which  the  hunting  habits  and  association  with 
wild  nature  continued  that  structure  would  develop  in  the 
direction  of  Le  Play's  Hunter  Type,  which,  while  no  less 
endowed  with  courage  than  the  pastoral  type,  is  distinguished 
from  that  type  by  a  character  not  of  the  self-sacrifice  of  the 
ideal  shepherd  but  of  self-assertion  and  "other-sacrifice."  The 
characteristics  of  the  "hunter  type"  are  those  of  men  who 
support  themselves  with  the  animal  and  vegetable  products  of 
nature,  obtained,  not  like  crops  or  herds  by  a  long  peaceful 
process  of  cultivation  or  tending,  but  by  an  aleatory  search 
under  conditions  which  involve  the  constant  risk  of  various 
serious  dangers.  The  hunter,  whether  he  seek  animal  or  vege- 
table products,  must  often  come  into  situations  in  which  he 
must  either  take  the  life  of  a  fierce  assailant  or  yield  his  own ; 
as  he  may  sometimes  search  long  without  reward  he  will  hold 
fast  to  whatever  he  gets ;  he  resents  the  intrusion  of  others  into 
the  circle  of  his  hunting  because  increasing  demand  means  a 
diminishing  supply,  and  he  therefore  lives  in  small  com- 
munities and  develops  a  spirit  of  independence.  As  he  seeks 
vegetable  as  well  as  animal  products  the  term  Hunter  is  not 
quite  appropriate ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  find  another  single  word 
to  convey  the  sense  of  the  tracking  of  animals  as  well  as  of  the 
search  for  other  products  of  the  jungle.  The  name  is  not  of 
much  importance  however  provided  its  connotations  are  kept 
in  mind. 

The  clearest  line  of  development  of  the  hunter  spirit  is  that 
which  leads  to  the  warrior  asserting  himself  against  other  men, 
with  which  is  closely  associated  the  development  of  the  pre- 


[   48    ] 

datory  instincts.  Another  line  of  development  is  that  which 
transforms  the  courage  and  self-assertion  of  the  hunter  into 
a  spirit  of  adventure  first  in  the  material  and  then  in  the 
mental  universe.  Again  one  side  of  the  hunter's  mind  is  dis- 
tinguished by  its  interest  in  and  study  of  nature;  originally 
aiming  only  at  increased  power  of  catching  and  destroying,  this 
becomes  transformed  to  the  spirit  of  the  naturalist.  But  what- 
ever subsequent  transformations  take  place  the  original  hunting 
instinct  in  its  earliest  transformations  still  persists  (or  "per- 
severes") though  overlaid  by  subsequent  experiences.  It 
appears  only  slightly  veiled  in  the  taste  for  games  in  which  a 
player  or  thing  is  hunted.  It  is  shown  in  the  interest  in  a  terrier 
killing  rats.  It  is  to  be  traced  in  the  subjective  sweetness  of 
stolen  fruit.  It  appears  blatantly  in  the  passion  for  sports  in 
which  killing  plays  an  essential  part  as  the  indubitable  regis- 
tration of  success.  It  was  offered  as  an  explanation  of  the 
"disastrous  outbreak  of  burglaries"  experienced  in  England 
after  the  conclusion  of  the  armistice  last  November,  having 
been  awakened  as  a  predatory  character  by  the  stimulus  of  the 
war  even  in  men  who  had  remained  in  civil  life.  Under  certain 
stimuli  it  still  appears  in  its  primitive  simplicity,  even  in  the 
most  highly  cultured  natures,  as  when  Julian  Grenfell  wrote  of 
the  Joy  of  Battle.  In  no  civilised  society  however  can  the  pure 
ideal  of  the  hunter  be  pursued ;  it  is  the  negation  of  organised 
life  in  a  large  community.  The  changing  conditions  of  environ- 
ment and  the  consequent  development  in  some  degree  of 
agricultural  occupations  demand  from  any  race  which  wills  to 
survive  a  modification  of  its  mental  structure  to  an  extent  which 
varies  with  the  character  intensity  and  duration  of  its  racial 
experience.  But  as  has  already  been  emphasised  the  primitive 
qualities  are  modified,  not  eradicated;  they  still  continue  to 
play  a  part. 

Every  people  has  passed  through  the  hunting  stage  at  some 
period  of  its  development,  and  the  qualities  developed  therein 
are  still  present  in  a  form  more  or  less  overlaid  and  modified 
according  to  its  history.  In  all  Burma,  with  the  jungle  until 
recently  so  close  to  every  village  and  with  such  recent  memories 
of  war  and  conquest,  the  overlaying  and  modification  are  less 
than  in  many  races;  but  in  Tharrawaddy  where  contact  with 


[   49    ] 

wild  Nature  (both  in  the  hills  on  the  east  and  in  the  floods  to 
the  west)  and  undeveloped  conditions  and  weak  government 
and  comparative  isolation  from  the  culture  of  both  the  Burmans 
on  the  north  and  the  Talaings  on  the  south  existed  so  recently, 
we  may  expect  to  find  particularly  strong  evidence  of  the  per- 
sistence of  the  hunter's  spirit  as  a  Ghost  of  the  ancestors  of  the 
race  in  the  ideals  traditions  and  character  of  the  people.  Tharra- 
waddy  in  fact  in  1850  differed  from  the  central  areas  of  Burman 
and  Talaing  civilisation  just  as  these  differed  from  western 
Europe,  in  that  the  primitive  hunting  instinct  was,  owing  to 
the  physical  environment  and  occupations  of  the  people,  nearer 
the  surface  and  therefore  so  much  more  readily  stimulated. 
Here  indeed  was  the  true  source  of  the  "confidence  and  courage 
and  predilection  for  a  military  life"  which  Major  Nuthall 
observed  in  the  Tharrawaddy  men  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry 
and  ascribed  to  predatory  habits  in  Burmese  times ;  he  was  more 
nearly  right  in  his  words  than  in  his  intention,  the  assignment 
of  the  basic  meaning  of  "predatory"  is  all  that  his  words  re- 
quire. The  spirit  of  independence  which  gave  rise  to  the  reports 
that  the  Tharrawaddy  men  disposed  of  rulers  who  did  not 
suit  them  derived  originally  from  the  same  source.  Gaung  Gyi 
with  his  strong  spirit  of  independence  and  bold  adventure  and 
his  clever  strategy,  which  took  advantage  everywhere  of  the 
difficulties  which  the  physical  conditions  offered  to  his  oppo- 
nents, was  the  very  type  of  the  Tharrawaddy  man.  The  people 
of  Sagaing  and  Shwebo,  long  accustomed  to  living  by  the  culti- 
vation of  the  lands  adjacent  to  their  compact  closely-organised 
villages  and  frequently  engaged  in  distant  wars  or  in  repelling 
invasions,  organised  themselves  and  developed  first  into  the 
disciplined  soldiers  of  Alompra  and  Bandula  and  later  into 
the  favourite  flock  of  the  Registrar  of  Co-operative  Societies. 
The  Burmans  of  Tharrawaddy  lived  in  a  sparsely  inhabited 
jungle  tract  and  took  no  part  in  the  collective  action  of  either 
the  Burmans  to  the  north  or  the  Talaings  to  the  south.  Pre- 
serving more  nearly  in  its  primitive  form  the  independent 
hunting  spirit  they  proved  themselves  in  the  Pegu  Light  In- 
fantry, as  well  as  in  the  persons  of  Gaung  Gyi  and  his  followers, 
well  adapted  to  irregular  guerilla  warfare;  and,  except  in  the 
significant  case  of  a  football-team  which  gives  an  opening  for 

D.  4 


[   50   ] 

the  indulgence  of  the  hunting  spirit,  co-operation  in  all  forms 
is  much  more  difficult  to  establish  among  them  unless  the 
individual  advantage  can  be  clearly  seen. 

The  present  population  of  Tharrawaddy  has  not  descended 
entirely  from  the  stock  of  1850;  it  has  been  largely  recruited 
from  immigrants  from  Upper  Burma.  But  it  was  naturally  the 
more  adventurous  and  more  independently-minded  Upper 
Burmans  who  emigrated  to  the  Lower  Province  where  they 
had  to  experience  all  the  differences  of  the  unfamiliar  conditions 
associated  with  level  contours  and  a  heavy  rainfall.  Upper  Burma 
thereby  was  relieved  of  those  adventurous  and  independent 
spirits  which  would  have  weakened  its  tendency  to  solidarity. 
But  in  Tharrawaddy  like  was  added  to  like ;  while  in  the  same 
way  the  other  districts  of  Lower  Burma  have  received  a  popur 
lation  of  the  adventurous  type  somewhat  similar  to  that  of 
Tharrawaddy  in  addition  to  whatever  they  had  before,  and  so 
have  acquired  in  greater  or  less  degree  the  Tharrawaddy  char- 
acter. 

The  spirit  of  adventure  being  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  old 
hunting  and  killing  spirit,  it  is  not  surprising  that  other  traits 
closely  associated  with  the  same  spirit  or  transformations  of  it  ap- 
pear. A  love  of  gambling  is  certainly  more  closely  associated  with 
the  uncertainty  of  the  hunter's  life,  with  its  alternations  of  hunger 
and  surfeit,  than  with  the  life  of  the  shepherd  or  cultivator.  The 
instant  appeal  to  the  knife  in  petty  quarrels  is  the  direct  outcome 
of  the  spirit  of  the  hunt.  The  individualism  of  the  hunter  is  one 
of  the  direct  causes  of  the  lack  of  cohesion  in  the  villages  of 
Lower  Burma,  which  would  have  been  cured  before  now  if  the 
varied  origins  of  the  immigrants  and  present  physical  conditions 
were  its  sole  causes.  The  competitive  individualism  which 
characterises  agriculture  in  Lower  Burma  would  perhaps  have 
arisen  amongst  any  people  placed  in  the  same  circumstances, 
but  the  immediate  and  complete  reaction  of  the  Burmans  to  the 
conditions  was  a  result  of  the  hunter  spirit  expressed  in  in- 
dividualism. 


VIIL    THE  RAISING  OF  GHOSTS 

The  persistence  of  the  primitive  traits  of  the  hunting  age  is  a 
factor  which  has  frequently  been  overlooked  or  denied  because 
the  traits  have  been  hidden  by  a  screen  formed  of  the  complex 
of  inhibitions  developed  in  the  later  history  of  the  race  and  dense 
in  proportion  to  the  sum  of  subsequent  racial  experiences.  But 
it  so  happens  that  there  is  ready  to  hand  a  direct  test  of  the 
theory  in  an  observation  of  the  effect  of  temporarily  suppressing 
those  inhibitions.  The  Advisory  Committee  under  Lord  D  Aber- 
non,  which  reported  to  the  Central  Liquor  Traffic  Control 
Board  in  England  in  1917  on  the  effects  of  alcohol  on  the  human 
organisation,  is  probably  the  highest  authority  on  that  subject. 
It  is  reported  that  (setting  aside  the  case  of  the  chronic  drunkard) 
alcohol  successively  suspends  the  functions  of  the  brain  and 
mind  in  the  order  from  above  downwards — that  is  to  say,  in 
the  inverse  order  of  their  development  in  the  individual  and  in 
the  race.  Small  doses  affect  the  higher  intellectual  faculties, 
which  are  the  latest  acquirements  of  the  brain ;  and  the  result 
is  a  failure  of  inhibitions  and  a  consequent  setting  free  of  the 
emotions  and  their  instinctive  impulses  from  intellectual  control. 
A  further  dose  leads  to  a  disturbance  of  the  functions  of  sense- 
perception  and  skilled  movement,  and  this  disturbance  is 
accompanied  by  emotional  instability;  the  emotions  and  in- 
stinctive impulses  being  still  relatively  intact,  the  drinker  is 
apt  to  give  way  to  violent  displays  of  emotions  characterised 
by  the  exclusive  dominance  of  each  primary  emotion  in  turn. 
The  report  is  a  scientific  corroboration  of  In  vino  Veritas. 
Viewed  in  this  light  the  well-known  effects  of  alcohol  upon 
Burmans  are  a  corroboration  of  the  theory  of  the  persistence 
in  them  of  the  hunting  and  killing  traits  behind  a  screen  of  more 
modern  acquisitions,  the  greater  readiness  with  which  the 
screen  is  removed  in  Burmans  than  in  Europeans  being  a  result 
partly  perhaps  of  less  racial  experience  of  alcohol  but  largely 
of  the  more  recent  acquirement  of  the  screen. 

It  was  of  course  common  knowledge  long  ago  that  the  con- 
sumer of  a  sufficient  dose  of  alcohol  is  liable  to  become  quarrel- 
some and  behave  generally  in  an  uncivilised  manner.   But  the 

4—2 


[     52     ] 

analysis  of  the  mode  of  action  of  alcohol,  which  though  it  was 
denied  by  many  when  taught  by  Sir  Victor  Horsley  and  others 
has  now  received  the  incontrovertible  authority  of  Lord 
D'Abernon's  committee,  brings  that  knowledge  to  us  in  a  form 
of  which  use  can  be  made  in  two  different  ways.  In  the  first 
place  it  will  be  noticed  that  the  analysis  does  not  prove  that 
alcohol  is  a  prolific  cause  of  crime.  It  shows  that  it  is  possible 
for  it  to  be  such,  and  demands  therefore  an  investigation  into 
the  correlation  of  alcohol  with  crime  in  any  criminal  locality. 
But  it  goes  further — and  this  is  a  matter  not  commonly  appre- 
ciated; it  shows  that  care  is  needed  in  rejecting  an  indicated 
correlation  in  one  locality  because  it  cannot  be  discovered  in 
another.  It  will  often  be  accepted  that  differing  environment  or 
occupations  will  account  for  different  results  being  obtained 
in  two  localities,  but  it  is  not  yet  sufficiently  realised  that,  even 
when  environment  and  occupations  are  identical  now,  the  human 
material  may  be  different  because  of  differences  in  long-for- 
gotten history.  (In  the  study  of  this  matter,  too,  one  should 
count  not  only  the  stabber  who  acted  under  the  influence  of 
alcohol  consumed  by  himself  but  also  him  who  stabbed  on  a 
provocation  given  by  a  consumer;  but  the  figures  should  be 
kept  distinct.)  The  second  direction  in  which  the  analysis  is 
of  use  is  in  its  suggestion  of  a  possible  cause  of  crime  in  any 
drug  or  other  influence  which  by  inhibiting  the  control  of  the 
higher  nerve-centres  raises  the  ghosts  of  past  ages.  The  effect 
of  opium  is  known  to  be  a  depression  of  the  faculties  of  reason 
and  judgment  accompanied  initially  by  a  slight  excitement  of 
the  imagination  that  soon  gives  way  to  a  general  depression 
which,  as  in  the  case  of  alcohol,  affects  the  faculties  in  the 
reverse  order  of  their  development.  Thus  the  relation  of  opium 
to  crime  should  be  studied  in  the  same  way  as  that  of  alcohol. 
That,  indeed,  has  long  been  generally  understood,  but  a  more 
subtle  influence  which  has  commonly  been  overlooked  is  malaria. 
The  effect  of  wide  malaria  infection  is  a  subject  demanding 
the  close  study  of  a  mind  trained  in  statistics  and  psychology 
as  well  as  versed  in  the  study  of  malaria.  Opium  is  commonly 
consumed  all  along  the  Pegu  Yoma  as  a  preventive  of  malaria ; 
it  has  even  been  alleged  that  in  some  eastern  parts  of  the  Prome 
District  a  cultivator  must  guarantee  a  supply  of  opium  for  this 


[   53    ] 

reason  before  he  can  get  a  ploughman  to  agree  to  work  for  him. 
Many  Burmans  who  would  refuse  to  use  opium  even  as  a 
preventive  of  fever  resort  freely  to  alcohol  when  travelling  in 
malarious  areas.  A  large  proportion  of  town  Burmans,  if  they 
have  to  go  out  even  to  rural  villages,  to  say  nothing  of  the  jungle, 
in  October  or  November,  regard  a  daily  dose  of  some  form  of 
alcoholic  drink  as  indispensable  to  protect  them  against  fever; 
and  the  dose  is  very  apt  to  grow.  Many  have  thus  contracted 
either  the  opium  or  the  alcohol  habit  directly  through  the  fear 
of  malaria.  But  the  close  study,  in  the  light  of  the  Freud  theory 
of  repressed  tendencies,  of  the  neuroses  arising  from  malaria 
and  malarial  cachexia  in  Burmans  would  probably  establish 
a  relationship  between  malaria  and  crime  arising  in  much  the 
same  way  as  the  relationship  between  crime  and  alcohol,  by 
the  weakening  of  the  mental  forces  which  maintain  the  repression . 
Malaria  will  then  appear  to  be  a  far  more  potent  force  than 
alcohol  or  opium  because  it  affects  a  so  much  larger  portion  of 
the  population. 

The  analysis  now  suggests  still  another  line  of  thought. 
Alcohol  and  opium  and  probably  malaria  are  related  to  crime 
through  the  failure  of  repressing  forces  which  arises  from  their 
effect  upon  the  nervous  system.  But  such  a  failure  may  be 
caused  in  other  ways.  One  such  way  is  by  emotional  shock, 
but  the  resulting  condition  is  then  regarded  as  pathological  and 
outside  the  present  studies.  A  more  subtle  way  is  by  long-con- 
tinued conscious  or  sub-conscious  mental  friction  or  stress 
arising  from  the  repression  of  tendencies  and  habits  which  have 
previously  had  full  play.  Such  stress  must  occur  whenever 
adjustment  is  made  to  a  changed  environment.  With  the  en- 
vironment changing  slowly  the  stress  may  not  be  great ;  but  with 
an  economic  environment  changing  as  rapidly  as  that  of  the 
Lower  Burman  has  done  the  stress  must  be  serious.  Take  what 
is  perhaps  the  most  obvious  change  as  an  example,  and  consider 
all  the  effects  of  the  changes  in  the  habits  of  domestic  economy 
arising  from  the  loss  of  free  jungle-products  which  can  no 
longer  be  collected  in  most  places  because  the  expansion  of 
cultivation  has  pressed  back  the  limits  of  the  jungle  from  which 
also  a  larger  population  desires  to  take  toll.  In  Tharrawaddy  in 
particular  there  is  combined  with  this  the  repression  of  the 


[   54   ] 

instinct  for  the  hunt,  formerly  satisfied  by  the  search  for  all 
free  natural  products,  both  animal  and  vegetable,  and  repressed 
quite  suddenly  and  recently.  But  it  is  the  very  alphabet  of 
psychology  that  suppression  leads  to  violent  manifestation ;  and 
the  Thonze  householder  dares  not  leave  a  waterpot  outside  his 
house  at  night  lest  it  appeal  to  somebody  as  a  free  gift  of  Nature 
to  be  appropriated  for  the  trouble  of  collecting  it.  So  too,  all 
the  changes  in  environment,  economic  or  physical,  cause, 
through  the  repression  of  tendencies  belonging  to  the  old 
environment,  mental  strain  which  results  in  many  individuals 
in  strong  reaction.  The  strain  is  sub-conscious  and  the  individual 
is  unable  to  explain  the  "motive"  which  apparently  caused  the 
crime.  But  there  is  probably  much  to  learn  from  a  study  of  the 
modern  theory  of  hysteria,  with  which  many  cases  of  crime  are 
undoubtedly  related,  particularly  those  in  which  the  "motive" 
is  obscure  and  the  only  apparent  explanation  is  "pure  cussed- 
ness."  Some  aspects  of  the  social  disorganisation,  such  as  the 
failure  to  provide  reasonable  house-sites,  take  effect  in  a  similar 
way  by  establishing  neurasthenic  conditions  under  which  the 
ghosts  are  raised  and  walk  again. 

The  clearest  cause  of  mental  strain  associated  with  the  loss 
of  free  jungle  products  is,  however,  the  difficulty  of  making 
ends  meet  in  the  domestic  budget  without  them ;  and  this  leads 
to  the  consideration  of  all  forces  which  by  tending  to  impose  a 
lower  standard  of  living  excite  reacting  mental  stresses  in  the 
endeavour  to  maintain  the  habitual  standard.  From  this  it  is 
only  one  step  more  to  the  consideration  of  the  effect  of  the  fear 
and  worry  due  to  all  poverty  however  caused,  and  thus  to  find 
a  cause  of  crime  in  any  cause  of  poverty.  The  most  obvious 
cause  of  poverty  in  Lower  Burma  generally  is  the  competitive 
basis  of  its  economic  life.  Other  causes  are  the  alcohol  and 
opium  habits  which  take  effect  both  by  direct  exhaustion  of 
resources  and  by  reducing  industrial  efficiency.  Malaria,  what- 
ever may  be  its  direct  psychological  effect,  is  another  powerful 
cause  of  poverty  acting  either  by  depriving  wife  and  children 
of  their  natural  supporter,  or  by  the  loss  of  efficiency  when 
working,  or  by  the  loss  of  time  when  too  ill  to  work — perhaps 
occurring  at  a  critical  point  in  the  agricultural  season  and  causing 
a  failure  of  the  harvest  for  a  tenant  or  owner,  and  dismissal  for 


[   55    ] 

the  labourer.  Whether  due  to  economic  competition,  to  malaria 
or  to  drugs,  poverty  tends  to  work  in  a  vicious  circle,  to  re-inforce 
its  own  causes  and  so  accentuate  itself  and  its  effects.  And  the 
psychological  consideration  of  its  action  in  a  people  of  the  Bur- 
man  temperament  shows  that  crime  may  be  caused  indirectly 
by  poverty  of  much  less  than  that  extreme  degree  in  which 
destitution  acts  as  a  direct  stimulus  to  theft  to  supply  an 
elementary  need. 

Thus  poverty,  drugs,  malaria  and  the  change  of  physical  and 
economic  environment  may  be  regarded  as  causing  crime  in- 
directly and  through  their  mental  and  nervous  effects.  In 
addition  there  are  forces  stimulating  directly  the  production 
of  crime.  The  influence  of  example  is  particularly  important 
amongst  these  because  it  becomes  constantly  more  powerful 
as  crime  increases.  It  must  not  be  thought  that  the  power  of 
example  is  restricted  to  unpunished  crime;  the  influences  of 
suggestion  and  mimicry  in  circumstances  in  which  other  forces 
have  already  excited  irritation  are  effective  even  in  the  case  of  a 
crime  which  is  detected  and  punished,  particularly  if  the  crime 
takes  place  locally  and  the  punishment  far  away  in  a  secluded 
institution.  Another  stimulus  to  crime  arises  directly  out  of 
the  mere  increase  of  the  density  of  the  population.  If  the 
population  of  a  given  area  is  doubled  the  number  of  contacts 
between  individuals  must  be  quadrupled,  and  the  number  of 
occasions  of  mutual  irritation  or  of  temptation  must  also  be  at 
least  quadrupled  unless  some  influence  concurrently  diminishes 
them.  The  competitive  atmosphere  of  the  economic  life  of 
to-day  is  certainly  not  such  an  influence.  Normally  the  growth 
of  population  should  be  accompanied  by  growth  of  social 
organisation  under  which  men,  becoming  associated  instead  of 
merely  being  gregarious,  learn  to  allow  less  effect  to  occasions 
of  irritation;  this  is  indeed  the  essence  of  civilisation.  The  lack 
of  social  organisation  appears  again  therefore  as  a  stimulus  of 
crime  through  the  consequent  failure  of  civilisation  to  advance 
as  rapidly  as  the  population  increases. 

We  have  already  noted  that  the  disconnected  outbreaks  of 
crime  in  Tharrawaddy  before  1904  were  accompanied  by  acute 
economic  conditions  and  political  tension,  and  that  since  that 
year  there  has  been  a  growing  economic  and  social  disorganisa- 


[   56   ] 

tion,  which  would,  as  we  now  see,  tend  to  produce  psychological 
conditions  in  which  ghosts  of  instincts  or  tendencies  developed 
in  earlier  stages  of  the  evolution  of  the  people  would  be  raised 
and  crime  generated.  The  temporary  stress  of  1878  to  1880 
and  1885  to  1889  produced  temporary  outbreaks.  The  crime  of 
1894  also  started  under  economic  stress  and  would  probably  have 
subsided,  too,  in  the  same  way  as  those  previous  outbreaks  if 
the  general  economic  and  social  conditions  had  been  the  same. 
But,  although  the  economic  and  social  disorganisation  in  Tharra- 
waddy  had  not  yet  advanced  far  enough  in  1894  ^^  t)e  accepted 
as  the  cause  of  the  chronic  state  of  crime  obtaining  there  since 
that  date,  it  had  proceeded  far  enough  to  neutralise  the  measures 
taken  for  repression.  As  each  year  passed  the  disorganisation 
was  steadily  growing  and  its  effect  was  enhanced  by  the  growing  , 
stimulus  of  example.  By  1904  the  conditions  of  industrial 
agriculture  were  establishing  themselves,  and  with  a  history 
of  ten  continuous  criminal  years  the  high  output  of  crime  be- 
came normal  and  only  liable  to  oscillation  as  exacerbating 
influences  and  the  measures  for  its  suppression  alternately 
obtained  the  upper  hand. 

Thus  by  pressing  back  to  the  psychological  basis  of  the  effects 
of  economic  and  other  conditions  it  is  possible  to  meet  the  two 
difficulties  in  assigning  to  economic  causes  the  chronic  crime  of 
Tharrawaddy,  which  began  before  those  causes  had  become 
chronic  and  developed  in  greater  intensity  in  Tharrawaddy  than 
where  those  causes  were  more  developed.  The  primitive  in- 
stincts, which  are  found  in  men  of  every  race  because  of  the 
conditions  of  life  of  primitive  man,  but  are  transformed  and 
repressed  by  the  inhibitions  and  mental  modifications  acquired 
in  the  course  of  racial  development,  can  be  liberated  by  certain 
stimuli  in  their  primitive  or  only  partially  transformed  character. 
Owing  to  the  physical,  political  and  social  history  of  Tharra- 
waddy those  inhibitions  are  even  less  firmly  established  in  its 
people  than  in  other  Burmans,  while  the  transformation  of  the 
primitive  hunting  and  predatory  instincts  by  environment  and 
occupation  has  not  proceeded  so  far;  and  accordingly  those 
instincts  are  more  easily  stimulated  in  Tharrawaddy  than  in 
other  districts,  although  owing  to  colonisation  by  people  of  a 
similar  innate  character  the  delta  districts  have  populations 


[   57   ] 

which  do  in  some  degree  partake  of  the  Tharrawaddy  character. 
Amongst  the  stimuli  which  tend  to  revive  the  primitive  instincts 
poverty  and  the  other  effects  of  the  current  economic  and  social 
conditions  are  perhaps  the  most  powerful,  and  continued  crime 
began  sooner  in  the  neighbouring  districts  than  in  Tharrawaddy 
because  in  them  these  economic  conditions  developed  sooner. 
But  the  crime  of  Tharrawaddy  developed  most  intensely 
because  of  the  innate  character  of  its  population,  which  re- 
sponded more  readily  to  those  stimuli  and  to  the  stimulus  of 
example  of  which  the  influence  has  grown  at  an  increasing  rate. 
Other  stimuli  have  been  alcohol,  opium  and  malaria.  As 
causes  of  poverty  these  reinforce  the  effects  of  the  economic 
conditions,  and  they  have  also  direct  influence.  Malaria  is  rife 
now  along  the  foot  of  the  Yoma  and  was  of  prime  importance 
among  the  forces  retarding  the  development  of  the  old  prin- 
cipality. It  is  probably  even  now  more  serious  in  Tharrawaddy 
than  in  most  districts  of  Lower  Burma;  and  besides  having 
thus  a  greater  direct  influence  would  be  more  effective  in 
inducing  the  alcohol  and  opium  habits.  Further,  remembering 
the  transformation  of  the  primitive  hunting  spirit  into  the  spirit 
of  adventure,  it  need  cause  no  surprise  if  the  people  of  Tharra- 
waddy are  found  to  be  more  ready  than  others,  quite  apart  from 
fever  prevention,  to  experiment  with  drugs.  In  this  connection 
there  is  on  record  a  report  which  may  also  interest  those  who 
regard  the  British  Government  as  responsible  for  the  opium 
evil  in  Burma.  It  was  made  by  Captain  Smith  in  1853,  ^^^  ^^^^ 
year  of  the  British  occupation  of  the  province,  when  Gaung  Gyi's 
rebellion  was  in  full  swing  and  the  Sarawah  and  Tharrawaddy 
people  were  driven  to  Henzada  and  suffered  there  from  great 
poverty,  and  it  stated  that  "intoxicating  drugs  are  used  to 
excess  by  the  idlers — chiefly  opium  sold  secretly  by  Chinamen." 
This  report  not  only  forestalled  a  recent  view  of  the  opium 
question,  but  suggests  that  the  people  were  indeed  susceptible 
to  the  temptation  of  drugs.  Such  susceptibility  is  not  a  suffi- 
cient reason  for  condemnation,  Emerson,  an  apostle  of  the 
Higher  Life,  recognising  the  greater  readiness  with  which 
drugs  are  used  by  the  adventurous  than  by  the  timid,  even 
went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  a  people  which  has  never  indulged 
in  some  drug  is  not  worth  its  salt. 


IX.    THE  LAYING  OF  GHOSTS 

The  history  of  greatest  interest  to  intelligent  men  is  the  history 
of  what  has  not  yet  occurred.  All  history  of  the  past  is  of  interest 
chiefly  as  an  aid  to  writing  the  history  of  the  future.  The  method 
of  this  science  of  pro-history  is  that  of  all  the  successful  sciences ; 
namely,  deduction  from  a  theory  which  resumes  all  the  known 
facts  in  a  kind  of  mental  shorthand  and  is  constantly  tested  by 
agreement  between  the  deductions  and  newly  discovered  facts. 
The  theory  is  a  pure  concept,  to  the  students  of  which  questions 
of  historical  truth  are  of  interest  only  as  guides  in  so  constructing 
the  theory  that  it  may  be  in  agreement  with  the  known  facts, 
and  questions  of  metaphysical  truth  are  of  no  interest  at  all.  The 
functions  of  the  theory  are  to  guide  to  the  discovery  of  new  facts 
and  to  increase  the  material  and  spiritual  power  of  man;  and 
the  theory  is  true  in  so  far  as  it  fulfils  these  functions.  The  earth 
is  safely  circumnavigated  through  the  theory  that  it  is  a  sphere 
around  which  the  rest  of  the  universe  revolves.  The  simple 
atomic  theory  of  matter  provides  a  satisfactory  basis  for  chem- 
istry so  long  as  a  certain  wide  range  of  phenomena  is  not  ex- 
ceeded. The  ghost  theory  of  the  Tharrawaddy  crime  is  advanced 
with  a  similar  pragmatic  claim ;  it  is  suggested  that  it  resumes  with 
sufficient  accuracy  the  known  facts  and  furnishes  a  guide  to  the 
discovery  of  new  facts,  and,  inasmuch  as  knowledge  is  an 
indispensable  preliminary  thereto,  assists  in  the  discovery  of 
the  proper  methods  of  dealing  with  its  subject.  It  is  in  fact  a 
tool  to  work  with.  It  conceives  of  the  production  of  crime  by 
the  action  of  certain  stimuli  upon  a  people  of  a  particular 
psychological  character  which  is  the  natural  result  of  their 
past  history.  It  exhibits  the  "antecedent  and  primary  causes 
which  bring  about  the  disposition  to  commit  crime"  {Police 
Report,  191 1 )  and  by  throwing  light  upon  the  mode  of  action  of 
known  stimuli  offers  aid  in  the  detection  of  others.  It  suggests 
three  methods  of  combating  crime:  to  discover  and  remove 
or  weaken  the  stimuli ;  to  provide  legitimate  means  of  expression 
for  the  repressed  instincts  concerned ;  and  to  convert  the  char- 


[    59   J 

acter  of  the  people  by  transforming  those  instincts  and  over- 
laying them  with  inhibitions  which  will  successfully  resist  the 
stimuli.  The  satisfactory  application  of  these  methods  will 
involve  an  economic  social  and  spiritual  revolution;  their 
neglect  will  be  accompanied  by  a  development  of  crime  which 
will  make  future  administrators  of  Tharrawaddy  look  back  with 
a  sigh  to  what  they  will  regard  as  the  innocent  years  of  the 
Great  War.  "The  forces  of  the  world  do  not  threaten — they 
operate,"  says  President  Wilson;  and  that  is  true  of  the  crime 
stimulating  forces  at  work  in  Tharrawaddy.  Fortunately  it  is 
equally  true  of  the  forces  which  resist  them,  and  if  these  forces 
can  be  discovered  and  applied  in  time  with  sufficient  intensity 
their  success  is  equally  inevitable.  Already  a  beginning  is  being 
made  in  their  appHcation,  and  it  is  no  part  of  the  intention  of 
the  present  studies,  which  are  directed  to  the  "pure"  rather 
than  the  "applied"  branch  of  their  science,  to  work  out  a 
complete  system  of  application.  A  few  disjointed  suggestions 
arising  out  of  the  preceding  studies  are  all  that  will  be  offered. 
Amongst  the  stimuli  of  crime  example  was  noted  as  of 
particular  importance  because  of  the  cumulative  influence  it 
exercises.  Correlative  to  this  is  the  importance  of  the  measures 
for  reforming  criminals  and  repressing  crime.  The  agency  of 
repression  is  the  police  force,  and  the  improvement  of  the  police 
is  consequently  the  method  of  attacking  crime  which  meets 
with  fewest  sceptics.  The  story  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry 
Regiment  was  prefaced  to  these  studies  partly  because,  while 
one  of  the  difficulties  in  organising  that  regiment  was,  as  with 
the  police  to-day,  the  inadequacy  of  the  pay,  the  general  con- 
ditions of  service  were  of  even  more  importance.  The  ex- 
perience of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  Regiment  when  employed 
on  frontier  duty  showed  that  these  conditions  must  be  human 
if  the  force  is  to  be  a  success.  At  his  last  Durbar  (April  1919) 
the  Deputy  Commissioner  of  Tharrawaddy  called  for  a  body  of 
poUce  which  would  fill  other  districts  with  envy ;  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  the  district  can  supply  that  if  Govern- 
ment will  let  him  experiment  with  improved  conditions  of 
service.  The  need  for  better  pay  is  admitted;  but,  just  as  with 
Labour  in  Europe  and  America,  pay  alone  will  not  settle  the 
matter.  The  Tharrawaddy  policeman,  for  the  very  reasons  which 


[   6o   ] 

will  make  him  a  good  policeman,  requires  opportunity  for  self- 
expression  and  a  broader  life.  It  must  not  be  expected  that  the 
housing  problem  has  been  settled  for  the  Tharrawaddy  police 
by  the  supply  of  continuous  rows  of  cottages  even  more  closely 
resembUng  each  other  than  do  the  bricks  and  concrete  posts 
of  which  they  are  built ;  individuality  must  be  allowed  room  for 
expression  and  a  piece  of  land  must  be  given  to  each  man  for  a 
garden — and  opportunity  to  develop  it.  A  suitable  sheltered 
playground  for  the  children  of  the  station  is  also  required.  The 
supply  of  a  newspaper  is  as  important  in  the  police  station  as  in 
some  offices  in  the  Secretariat  to  which  newspapers  are  supplied 
at  Government's  expense.  Clubs  are  required  for  reading  as 
well  as  for  indoor  and  outdoor  games;  powers  have  recently 
been  granted  to  sanction  grants-in-aid  to  such  cases  and  the 
police  stations  should  not  be  overlooked,  though  the  institutions 
should  admit  others  than  police  and  other  officials  because  thus 
all  will  get  broader  views  and  develop  wider  sympathies,  and  a 
beginning  will  be  made  in  a  few  centres  at  least  of  the  process 
of  humanising  Ufe  in  Burma.  The  police  football  teams  have 
their  value;  but  even  against  these  a  warning  is  required, 
because  they  are  liable  to  monopolise  attention  and  leave 
non-players  without  the  provision  of  any  opportunity  for  self- 
expression  and  with  only  the  soreness  that  comes  when  a  player 
is  promoted. 

But  even  with  an  improved  police  force  repression  cannot 
be  successful  without  (in  the  words  of  the  Police  Report  191 6) 
"the  creation  of  a  healthy  public  opinion  leading  to  a  cordial 
co-operation  of  the  community  and  the  police."  And  that  is 
hardly  possible  until  a  community  has  been  developed.  But 
communities  cannot  be  developed  by  merely  granting  to  head- 
men power  to  inffict  punishment  upon  those  villagers  who,  not 
having  the  excuse  of  wealth,  fail  to  assist  them  in  carrying  out 
their  duties.  Nor  are  they  necessarily  produced  by  building 
village  fences;  " gregariousness  is  not  association."  The  im- 
provement of  the  status  of  headmen  has  its  uses,  but  it  can 
never  engender  the  desired  public  opinion  amongst  the  non- 
headmen  ;  benches  of  headmen  will  provide  a  useful  and  cheap 
branch  of  the  judicial  service,  but  unless  the  headmen  are  elected 
they  cannot  do  more  than  use  their  more  intimate  local  know- 


[   6i    ] 

ledge  to  punish  more  wisely  and  promptly,  and  to  recognise 
more  readily  the  cases  which  demand  guidance  rather  than 
punishment.  Public  opinion  will  arise  when  and  where  there 
is  a  community ;  communities  will  begin  to  develop  when  some 
enduring  medium  for  the  expression  of  their  sense  of  unity  is 
provided.  Economic  societies  cannot  as  a  rule  include  the 
whole  of  the  village;  political  organisation  is  required,  and  the 
formation  of  village  committees  with  constructive  powers, 
which  even  if  limited  are  real  and  susceptible  of  extension,  is 
the  first  step.  But  advance  in  political  organisation  requires 
improved  social  and  economic  organisation.  It  must  be  realised 
that  the  Village  Act  and  the  Village  System  are  by  no  means 
identical ;  the  rigorous  enforcement  of  the  former  is  not  really 
the  same  thing  as  the  maintenance  and  development  of  the 
latter.  The  Act  has  its  place  in  the  foundations  of  the  system, 
but  it  must  not  be  mistaken  for  the  commodious  apartments 
which  the  superstructure  ought  to  provide.  The  village-site 
problem  too  must  be  dealt  with  before  it  becomes  as  difficult 
as  in  the  Delta.  There  must  be  room  for  the  village  if  corporate 
life  is  to  develop.  The  destruction  of  old-established  hamlets 
in  the  Delta  by  the  aid  of  Township  Courts  gives  a  real  stimulus 
to  the  belief  that  law  and  order  are  not  upon  the  side  of  the 
people — a  belief  which  will  effectually  prevent  the  people  from 
being  upon  the  side  of  law  and  order.  Though  this  is  confined 
to  the  Delta  it  is  symptomatic  of  the  lack  of  touch  between  the 
judiciary  and  the  people  which  is  not  confined  to  the  Delta; 
it  is  due  not  only  to  ignorance  of  the  Land  Records  system  but 
to  an  ignorance  of  rural  conditions  which  must  afl^ect  unfavour- 
ably all  the  work  of  the  Courts. 

The  correlation  of  malaria  and  crime  in  Burma  should  be 
closely  studied.  Unfortunately  the  vital  statistics  in  Burma  are 
of  no  value  for  the  purpose,  nor  even  are  the  figures  for  patients 
in  the  hospitals.  A  malaria  survey  like  that  recently  carried  out 
in  Mandalay  is  urgently  required  in  all  the  criminal  districts; 
its  results  should  be  carefully  collated  with  local  crime  records, 
and  its  scope  and  tabulation  should  be  modified  if  necessary 
for  that  purpose.  Further,  a  continued  study  in  relation  to 
malaria  of  the  present  inmates  of  jails  and  of  new  entrants  for 
a  considerable  period,  and  a  tabulation  of  the  results  on  a  care- 


[     62     ] 

fully  considered  basis  of  kind  and  motive  of  crime  (and  also 
the  economic  status  of  the  criminal),  should  be  of  value  if  the 
statistical  examination  of  the  data  were  made  by  a  mind  trained 
in  that  work.  On  account  of  the  now  well-known  phenomenon 
that  malarial  cachexia  may  be  developed  to  a  high  degree 
although,  owing  to  his  system  having  become  habituated  to  the 
toxin,  the  subject  has  never  shown  prominent  symptoms  of 
fever  or  ague  of  any  kind,  the  study  of  the  prisoners  should  not 
be  confined  to  obtaining  a  record  of  clinical  symptoms  but 
should  be  pursued  with  the  unrestricted  aid  of  the  microscope ; 
while  on  the  other  hand  a  free  use  should  be  made  of  all  the 
methods  of  modern  psychology  to  study  the  co-existing  mental 
qualities.  There  is  reason  for  believing  that  the  co-ordination 
of  all  these  studies  in  Tharrawaddy  would  be  well  repaid. 

Incidentally  it  would  probably  become  clear  to  some  that  it 
is  entirely  unnecessary  to  have  a  skilled  medical  officer  to  check 
the  ordinary  routine  papers  of  jail  administration.  It  is  surely 
something  of  a  paradox  that  the  comparatively  few  prisoners  in 
a  District  Jail,  mostly  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  living  under  a 
carefully  framed  regime,  well  housed  and  sufficiently  fed, 
protected  from  most  diseases,  and  suffering  only  by  the  mental 
effects  of  incarceration,  should  be  supplied  with  a  special 
medical  attendant;  while  the  immensely  larger  number  of 
persons  (largely  children  or  old  people)  outside  the  jail,  often 
insufficiently  clothed  and  fed,  living  lives  which  are  the  anti- 
thesis of  regularity  in  an  environment  often  extremely  insanitary, 
exposed  to  all  kinds  of  weather,  overwork,  infection  and  worry, 
are  neglected.  It  will  perhaps  be  realised  some  day  that  the 
inmates  of  the  jails  being  largely  drawn  from  the  mentally 
unstable  and  living  under  conditions  which  affect  only  the 
mind  unfavourably,  should  be  placed  in  the  charge  of  a  psy- 
chologist. The  Civil  Surgeon,  apart  from  executions  and  super- 
vision of  the  medical  service  of  the  jail,  would  be  set  free  for 
his  legitimate  duty  of  Health  Officer  in  the  rural  as  well  as  the 
urban  areas  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  law-abiding  as  well  as 
the  transgressors.  The  psychologist  would  be  fully  occupied 
because  he  could  not  understand  his  subjects  unless  he  also 
studied  persons  outside  the  jail ;  he  would  be  required  to  study 
also  the  school-children  and  advise  the  educational  authorities 


[   63    ] 

and  give  occasional  expert  assistance  at  the  hospital.  The  Civil 
Surgeon  would  then  be  able  to  attend  to  the  pioneer  cultivators 
who  are  clearing  new  holdings  on  the  edge  of  the  jungle.  All 
through  the  colonisation  of  Lower  Burma  the  fundamental 
difficulty  of  the  pioneer  has  been  not  finance  but  fever.  It  has 
constantly  been  the  inefficiency  caused  by  fever  which  has 
made  the  financial  difficulties  so  important.  But  although  the 
people  who  took  the  risks  of  pioneering  were  drawn  from  the 
more  virile  and  adventurous  portions  of  the  population,  no 
effort  was  ever  made  to  help  them  fight  the  fever  which  killed 
so  many  and  brought  so  many  others  into  the  debts  which 
eventually  swallowed  up  the  land  they  had  developed.  If  the 
medical  department  of  the  Province  had  taken  its  proper  part 
of  fighting  malaria  in  the  colonisation  of  Lower  Burma,  the 
economic  condition  of  the  cultivators  in  many  parts  would  have 
been  very  different  from  what  it  is.  Not  only  would  the  pioneers 
have  survived  in  better  economic  condition;  the  greater  ease 
of  success  as  a  pioneer  would  have  caused  many  more  to  leave 
the  old-established  tracts  and  so  have  relieved  the  competition 
there. 


X.    THE  LAYING  OF  GHOSTS  {concluded) 

The  stimuli  of  alcohol  and  opium  have  already  been  sufficiently 
discussed  in  the  development  of  the  theory.  Poverty  must  also 
be  dealt  with,  not  only  because  it  is  a  direct  stimulant  to  crime 
but  because  the  solution  of  the  economic  problem  is  a  necessary 
preliminary  to  any  considerable  advance  in  social  organisation 
on  lines  which  take  account  of  personality.  Moreover  economic 
organisation  is  the  easiest  to  start  because  the  advantages  to 
each  individual  can  be  most  clearly  seen ;  and  it  can  be  used  to 
facilitate  social  organisation.  An  endeavour  is  being  made 
with  co-operative  credit,  sale  and  supply.  In  a  society  of  small 
owners  these  could  probably  furnish  an  almost  complete  solution 
of  the  problem.  But  amongst  tenants,  with  such  severe  com- 
petition for  land  as  exists  amongst  the  tenants  of  the  Delta 
and  is  growing  in  Tharrawaddy,  they  cannot  succeed.  Nearly 
the  whole  of  what  they  save  in  interest  must  be  transferred  to 
rent,  leaving  the  tenants  almost  where  they  were  unless  they 
can  form  a  sufficiently  powerful  trade-union  or  can  form  societies 
to  take  over  the  land.  Meanwhile  the  greater  the  solidarity  of 
the  small  owners  and  tenants,  the  worse  the  lot  of  the  labourer 
who  must  also  look  then  to  collective  action  in  a  trade-union 
or  in  societies  which  take  over  the  land.  Except  in  areas  worked 
by  small  owners  (as  in  Prome)  subsidiary  industries  for  culti- 
vators will  benefit  chiefly  the  money-lenders  and  rent-receivers 
if  introduced  before  the  tenants  and  labourers  have  a  stronger 
economic  position.  Improved  seed  and  methods  of  cultivation, 
new  and  varied  or  multiple  crops,  all  tend  in  the  same  way  until 
that  condition  is  established.  Whether  the  competition  amongst 
tenants  in  Tharrawaddy  is  yet  so  severe  that  these  views  apply 
there  is  a  matter  of  enquiry ;  the  figures  of  the  last  settlement 
report  suggest  that  it  was  not  so  in  191 5,  but  the  conditions  may 
have  changed  during  the  war.  The  objection  to  the  introduction 
of  improvements  and  subsidiary  industries  while  the  tenants 
and  labourers  are  unorganised  is  not  merely  the  negative  con- 
sideration that  these  classes  would  get  little  benefit,  but  the 


[   65    ] 

serious  positive  consideration  that  they  would  thereby  be  so 
much  worse  off  even  when  they  did  improve  their  relative 
economic  position,  and  that  the  inevitably  consequent  struggle 
would  be  so  much  the  more  bitter.  In  the  case  of  subsidiary 
industries  there  is  also  the  difficulty  that  the  profit  derived  from 
them  might  not  be  enough  to  provide  for  a  fair  standard  of 
living  and  yet  be  enough  to  make  the  establishment  of  a  trade- 
union  more  difficult.  It  may  be  necessary  to  accept  the  dis- 
advantages of  co-operative  societies  amongst  tenants  to  effect 
the  initial  step  towards  the  wider  organisation ;  but  in  that  case 
the  step  should  be  taken  before  control  over  the  land  passes 
still  further  into  the  hands  of  rent-receivers.  There  are  dangers 
in  going  too  slow  in  co-operation  as  well  as  in  going  too  fast. 
The  balanced  development  of  whole-time  non-agricultural 
industries  to  relieve  the  competition  for  land  and  agricultural 
employment  offers  a  different  prospect  and  furnishes  perhaps 
the  most  fruitful  field  of  endeavour  if  the  new  industries  are 
not  so  treated  as  to  produce  worse  problems  of  their  own.  The 
development  of  such  industries  would  not  only  reduce  the 
competition  amongst  tenants  and  labourers  but  would  provide 
the  needed  field  for  investment  or  spiritually  profitable  con- 
sumption of  much  of  the  wealth  which  at  present  is  a  bait 
stimulating  the  predatory  instincts. 

The  Land  Records  system  must  be  revised  so  that  it  can  less 
readily  be  used  by  the  wealthy  and  unscrupulous  to  the  detri- 
ment of  the  poorer  or  less  sophisticated.  The  methods  of  land- 
revenue  settlement  must  also  be  revised  to  secure  a  more  equitable 
distribution  of  the  revenue  amongst  the  assessees,  and  a  more 
defensible  gradation  of  the  changes  made  at  each  revision  than 
is  accorded  under  present  conditions  by  the  system  of  inter- 
mediate rates  in  vogue.  It  will  never  be  possible,  however,  to 
make  a  satisfactory  settlement  until  the  land-revenue  is 
supplemented  by  a  tax  upon  the  profit  derived  from  renting 
land,  including  in  such  profits  the  profit  derived  from  storing 
paddy  paid  as  rent,  which  at  present  escapes  assessment  to 
income-tax.  The  rent  received  for  agricultural  land  should  not 
be  regarded  as  a  profit  of  agriculture  but  as  a  profit  of  investment 
in  land.  Profits  below  a  prescribed  minimum  being  exempted, 
there  would  be  no  danger  of  affecting  the  genuine  cultivator  or 


[   66   ] 

his  widow  or  orphan ;  the  change  could  only  hit  the  large  rent- 
receivers.  Traditions  relating  to  land-revenue  derived  from 
Akbar  and  other  early  authorities  must  give  way  to  the  needs 
of  the  present;  the  object  of  the  land-revenue  is  not  the  main- 
tenance of  a  tradition  but  equitable  taxation.  Without  such  a 
tax  as  that  suggested,  there  must  always  be  at  every  new  settle- 
ment the  difficulty  that  revenue  rates  which  would  transfer  to 
Government  its  proper  share  of  the  unearned  increment  of 
rent,  even  on  the  most  modest  basis  of  calculating  that  share, 
would  crush  the  cultivating  owners  or  at  least  seriously  depress 
their  standard  of  living  and  induce  those  nervous  effects  to 
which  attention  was  drawn  in  the  eighth  study.  Apart  from  such 
a  tax  the  most  effective  aid  in  the  improvement  of  settlements 
will  be  derived  from  the  formation  of  agricultural  trade-unions, 
which  will  be  able  to  undertake  most  of  the  work  of  the  settle- 
ment, and  particularly  will  carry  out  soil-classification  and 
arrange  the  relative  incidence  of  the  revenue  on  various  lands 
throughout  the  district  and  province  with  the  best  knowledge 
and  therefore  in  the  best  way. 

The  parrot-cry  that  the  lay  schools  do  not  develop  character 
as  did  the  monastery  schools  may  be  hushed  for  a  time  while  the 
energy  it  absorbs  is  given  to  devising  a  scheme  to  get  better 
teachers  with  sufficient  remuneration  to  make  their  minds  easy 
and  contented  and  schools  in  which  teachers  can  have  a  fair 
opportunity.  It  cannot  be  expected  that  every  teacher  will  be  an 
exceptional  man;  and,  without  being  such,  an  underpaid  and 
discontented  teacher,  suffering  from  severe  economic  pressure 
and  teaching  in  a  badly  designed  dwelling-house  in  any  odd 
corner  of  the  village,  cannot  be  expected  to  exert  the  best  possible 
influence  and  train  his  pupils  satisfactorily.  Spacious  and  con- 
venient school  buildings  with  adequate  play-grounds  and 
equipment  (extravagance  being  distinguished  from  adequacy 
for  other  reasons  besides  expense)  should  be  provided  at  the 
public  cost,  or  at  least  more  liberal  aid  should  be  given  from 
public  funds  than  is  now  the  case.  The  site  can  safely  be  outside 
the  village-fence  just  as  that  of  the  monastery  often  is  now,  and 
the  cost  can  be  recouped  in  the  near  future  by  reappropriation 
from  "Prisons."  The  lay  schools  if  given  an  opportunity  can 
do  as  much  as  religious  schools  to  inculcate  respect  for  such 


[   67   ] 

"superiors"  as  deserve  it;  it  would  be  a  poor  system  of  educa- 
tion which  did  not  encourage  the  discrimination  of  such.  It  is 
moreover  frequently  found  to  be  not  so  much  the  diminution 
of  respect  which  is  deplored  as  the  loss  of  servility.  Given  a 
reasonable  site  and  building,  the  lay  schools  can  use  the  same 
means  to  discipHne  of  keeping  the  school  clean  and  tending  the 
garden  as  the  monastery  schools. 

The  subjects  of  instruction  are  also  of  importance.  The  growing 
demand  amongst  Burmans  for  a  better  system  of  education  is 
a  good  sign,  but  there  is  a  marked  tendency  to  ask  for  technical 
education.  This,  though  useful  enough  in  its  way,  will  not  aid 
in  reducing  crime  (or  improving  political  capacity)  unless  the 
main  emphasis  is  laid  upon  the  stimulation  of  constructive 
imagination.  But  if  the  instinct  for  adventure  is  afforded  scope 
in  the  mental  and  spiritual  sphere  it  will  be  so  far  transformed 
that  much  stronger  stimuli  will  be  required  to  excite  it  to  demand 
expression  in  illegitimate  ways.  The  psychologist  when  he  came 
to  study  the  schools  would  quickly  conclude  that  their  days  are 
too  long;  shorter  sessions  being  given  to  literary  education,  the 
time  so  freed  should  be  devoted  to  genuine  nature-study 
always  in  close  contact  with  nature,  affording  thus  an  outlet  for 
the  hunter-instinct  in  its  earliest  transformation.  Occasions 
which  the  weather  made  unsuitable  for  nature-study  could  be 
utilised  for  some  kind  of  constructive  manual  work.  Nature- 
study  could  be  so  directed  as  to  enable  the  next  generation  to 
appreciate  and  respond  to  the  teachings  of  the  Agricultural 
Department  and  even  to  assist  that  Department. 

Related  to  the  development  of  nature-study  is  the  Boy  Scout 
organisation  which  was  the  outcome  of  a  specific  endeavour  to 
discover  a  means  of  encouraging  the  qualities  and  virtues 
developed  by  the  hunter  type  in  its  conflict  with  nature  while 
discouraging  the  hunter's  defects  and  vices.  There  are  only  two 
centres  of  Boy  Scouts  in  the  province  now,  and  neither  of  those 
is  in  the  Tharrawaddy  District  which  appears  to  be  a  very 
suitable  field  for  their  establishment.  An  organiser  of  the  right 
type  to  develop  Boy  Scout  centres  at  all  the  towns  of  the  Tharra- 
waddy district  could  be  found  amongst  the  many  partially 
disabled  officers  of  the  Expeditionary  Force  who  would  have 
the  advantage  of  all  the  glamour  of  his  war  experiences.   He 


I   68   ] 

would  train  local  Scoutmasters,  who  should  be  of  the  same  race 
as  the  scouts,  and  afterwards  transfer  the  whole  organisation 
to  them.  Scoutmasters  would  probably  be  best  obtained  at 
first  from  amongst  those  who  have  had  elementary  (but  not 
too  much)  military  training. 

But  it  is  useless  and  even  dangerous  to  improve  the  education 
of  the  children  unless  the  environment  in  which  they  will  live 
is  adapted  to  the  kind  of  adults  so  produced.  If  the  one  evicted 
devil  is  not  to  be  replaced  by  seven  worse,  the  new  capacities 
developed  in  the  transformation  of  the  old  instincts  must  be 
accorded  room  for  expression,  and  this  requires  the  general 
humanisation  of  village  and  town  life.  Every  encouragement 
should  be  given  to  the  societies  now  springing  up  for  this 
purpose  in  the  towns,  and  extension  of  their  activities  to  the^ 
villages  should  be  encouraged.  Land  ready  levelled  or  reclaimed 
and  drained  should  be  provided,  by  acquisition  if  necessary, 
for  the  erection  of  meeting-rooms  in  the  larger  villages.  Village 
committees  with  powers  to  construct  village  requirements  are 
needed  to  stimulate  the  development  of  a  corporate  spirit ;  they 
will  find  scope  again  in  this  direction  as  instruments  for  the 
transformation  of  the  hunter  instincts. 

Meanwhile  for  some  a  more  direct  outlet  can  be  provided 
by  recruiting  for  the  Burman  army,  but  their  training  should 
follow  the  Colonial  not  the  Prussian  model.  The  conditions  of 
life  in  the  army  must  be  human.  For  instance,  the  mistake  of 
sending  a  Burmese  detachment  to  a  distant  station  where  there 
was  no  minister  of  their  own  religion  must  not  be  repeated ;  a 
pongyi  chaplain  must  be  sent  with  them.  It  will  always  be 
impossible  to  turn  the  Tharrawaddy  recruit  into  a  satisfactory 
machine;  but  the  experiment  of  the  Pegu  Light  Infantry  and 
the  skill  endurance  and  courage  of  Gaung  Gyi  and  his  army 
showed  that  there  is  good  material  if  the  right  treatment  is 
accorded.  A  Burmese  Army,  by  stimulating  the  spirit  of 
nationalism  in  large  numbers  not  included  in  its  ranks,  will 
provide  still  another  influence  to  overlay  and  transform  the 
hunter's  spirit  of  self-assertion  by  a  sense  of  service  to  society. 

All  these  suggestions  are  founded  upon  the  idea  that  Tharra- 
waddy is  in  a  sense  the  youngest  district  of  Burma,  young  in 
the  psychology  of  its  people  because  of  its  geological  history. 


[   69  ] 

Its  turbulence  is  largely  the  turbulence  of  unguided  youth 
exposed  to  a  difficult  environment.  It  is  inarticulate  and  the 
forces  at  work  are  largely  sub-conscious;  yet  its  psychology  is 
not  peculiar,  but  is  that  of  all  new  colonies  and  can  be  compre- 
hended by  studying  the  more  articulate  colonists  of  the  Empire 
or  of  the  newer  parts  of  the  United  States.  Electricity,  which 
when  uncontrolled  excels  all  forces  in  destructiveness,  is,  if 
suitably  guided  or  transformed  to  other  forms  of  energy,  such 
that  it  is  now  put  forward  as  a  main  element  in  both  the 
material  and  the  spiritual  reconstruction  of  Western  Europe. 
So  too  the  genius  of  Tharrawaddy,  now  wasting  itself  in  crime, 
can  be  turned  by  sympathetic  treatment  based  on  real  compre- 
hension of  its  nature  into  the  great  treasure  of  the  province.  It 
is  the  stuff  of  which  are  made  poetry  and  inventions  and  scien- 
tific discoveries  and  theories,  and  is  worth  far  more  than 
petroleum  and  paddy.  But  like  petroleum  it  does  not  generally 
lie  upon  the  surface ;  it  must  be  sought  won  and  refined ;  like 
paddy  it  must  be  cultivated.  The  practical  problem  is  not  to 
suppress  but  to  raise  to  still  higher  potential  and  to  guide  in 
the  right  channels  the  instincts  of  adventure  in  the  children, 
and  to  provide  a  suitable  environment  for  the  adults  into  which 
children  trained  on  these  fines  must  develop.  To  stifle  these 
instincts  completely  is  impossible ;  any  attempt  at  stifling  must 
be  defeated  by  violent  reaction.  But  since  the  whole  is  greater 
than  its  part,  to  allow  them  to  waste  away  would  be  a  crime 
blacker  than  all  the  crime  that  Tharrawaddy  ever  has  produced 
or  ever  can. 


[THE  E3^T>] 


Z9et^9993000 


niH  13dVH3  IV   ON  dO  AllSHBAINn 


